Welding Tips and Tricks

Hello Guys,

I'm in need of any advice for welding up/adding metal to the rails of a 1911 pistol. Considerations would be to limit heat transfer and distortion to the frame. From what I gather preheating the metal and utilizing copper heat sinks to retain the heat would be necessary as well as annealing the weld afterward to soften it for machining processes. Any insight would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Mark

Thanks for the reply, but that thread really doesn't tell me how to do it only that it can be done.

Mark

I've never had to mess with my 1911, but I did once have to build up a broken sear on a Marlin Glenfield 66 .22 rifle I bought for $10.

I found MIG the most practical, building metal a spot at a time. It was a lot of cleanup work, but I never had to anneal the part. I rough-shaped the built-up area with a dremel, and finished with a mill file on the vise.

On a funny note, I didn't have enough of the original sear left to accurately gauge the angle and land, and was off a bit at the first test... It was a fully automatic .22 . The impact of the bolt closing fron the first shot would jar the sear loose, and release the firing pin. It'd dump that 16 round tube magazine in about 1 third of a second! I had fun with this for about 250 rounds, then fixed it.

A TIG repair will be more precise, and for the rails, you probably need some added hardness over my MIG fix. With a good preheat, and adding material in short bursts with time in between to allow "normalizing", along with the heat sink you mentioned, you may well avoid annealing altogether, as there's nothing wrong with these parts being hard, so long as they're machinable.

Since you said "rails", plural, I assume you mean the interface between the body and the slide, rather than a scope-mount "rail" as on a rifle.

Steve S

Here are a few links that may help you out. ( I prefer long range firearms. John Stranahan has a good book.)
http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/gu ... me-181964/
http://www.scribd.com/doc/44617100/The- ... Kuhnhausen
http://www.scribd.com/doc/44617734/The- ... Kuhnhausen

I'm going to bookmark those, myself!

Thanks.

Steve S

Would love to see some pics when or if possible.