Good Morning All!!!

Just picked a barrel for my “Roller” and look forward to using the 38-55 for a lighter load than the now 45-70..

Problem is that someone drilled six holes in the top flat for who knows what… A friend say’s fill them with JB Weld but did not know if that material could be blued..

Anybody have any experience  with this stuff??

TIA !!!

Ed…..

I've used J-B's industro-weld in an automotive racing machine shop.   This stuff can be milled, tapped, ground, and paint will stick to it.

I don't think it can be blued.   However, if you can come close to matching the blue color with paint, it will work.  You might even find some very dark blue paint with the deep color of a blued barrel.  Might be hard to match but you might come very close.

I know some of the repair made with it were invisible when finished.

Merle

I'd use properly threaded scope base screw that are a bit taller than needed to bottom out in the holes.  screw'm in good and tight,  maybe with some hard setting loc-tite.  then cut them off a bit above the barrel and peen and file them down to match the barrel.  they won't come out and you should have a nearly invisible blue-able hole repair.

addendum:  as an afterthought,  I'd also be sure to anneal the screws before installing them since many scope base screws are hardened.  Without annealing they might chip or flake on the edge when trying to peen them and result in an smaller but still unsightly gap.  the resulting uneven surface could also be difficult to counter drill for an easy-out if you needed to remove the repair plug for any reason.  Its possible that differing alloys between the barrel and the screws might create color variations when touched up with a cold blue but it'd probably be better than the raw holes.

Reg,

One trick some have used is to carefully stress-relieve the TIG weld areas with an oxy-acetylene torch afterward. And they normally don't approach the temps used for silver-soldering on a sight ramp or rib. Of course, one should only do, or have done for them, what they are comfortable with. 

You raised good points, and I like the Quote:
observation.

It reminds me of a young man who was going to calibrate some precision measuring equipment. Problem was, he had set the precision-ground steel gauge blocks on a sunny windowsill before hand, and sure enough, those gauge blocks soaked up some heat and grew a bit. Granted, not much, but enough to require another recalibration very shortly thereafter.   

Its interesting how metals will behave like a "semi-plastic" at times.

Regards,
BP

I would agree with plugging them with screws, but I wont use regular plug screws as they are made of harder material that doesn't peen as easy, and often turns a purple color when blued.
I use regular non plated screws and then just cut them off and peen them over. Then file, sand and cold blue or rust blue. Invisible without any welding.

I used so jb's to patch some rusty holes in my 76 Toyota Landcruiser. Works great. And the Landcruiser is blue so I had to paint the jb repairs. ... Don