Micro welding

[Dusty Morningwood]

Anyone had luck getting small, broken gun parts welded back together?  I have an extractor for a Swedish rolling block that had the business end snap off trying to get a stuck case out (Either a flaw in the metal or a flaw in me).  The extractor itself is much "beefier" than the Remington replacements on the market.  I have been told that jewellers can do this kind of small welding work better than, say, a machinist.

[Delmonico]

Any decent gunsmith should be able to do that.  Most jewlers do not work in iron and steel. 

If done with nickel/steel rod and re-heat treated the joint should be stronger than the original part.

[Dusty Morningwood]

Not sure I trust the one gunsmith I used here, but there is a guy outside of Fayetteville who could probably do it.  The jeweler idea came from a guy who handles lots of Swede rifles.

[Delmonico]

Not saying some jewlers couldn't do it, but I've never seen many folks wearing iron jewlrey.  Heck I could probally do it with my old Oxy/Act torch if I'd buy some gas, but I'm an old crippled up bodyman from back when cars were built of steel.  A Tig welder would be easier though.

[Digem Deep]

The part could be micro welded. But you would need to find someone with a micro welder. The one I use at work uses an 8X microscope. With micro welding you need to use very small filler rods and small electrode rods. Also the micro welder units are expensive. I wish you luck.

Dig'em Deep

[65bsaA65]

Delmonico's right on the TIG aspect; it's the cleanest, most precise type of conventional welding out there.  Works really well on small, tricky parts.  In one of the shops where I once worked. the guys from the machine shop would bring me worn tooling that I had to hard-face.  The parts had to be heated to 13-15 hundred degrees, then run abead with the TIG  with a special hardfacing (expensive) rod, wait until the metal just cools to black, then repeat passes until surface to be covered is covered.  Then the peice has to be cooled slowly(best done in an oven).  Once it's cooled, back to the machine shop where it would be cut to spec., then re-heattreated.  If all the pre-heating and slow cooling wasn't done, you'd wind up with scrap, as the hard face would crack and spall off if you hit it.
This probably sounds more complicated than it actually is, but the point I'm making is to make sure that any one doing the repair for you understands that heat treating the part to
proper hardness is the most important part of the exercise.  Any competent Tig welder with a good set of files can weld the part together and file it to shape; but your gunsmith should probably handle the heat-treating.
All that being said, I"ve got some pictures on my computer of a  S&W restoration by David Chicoine (before and after).  It started out looking like it had spent a 100 yers in a wet shed; by the time he was done it was a hundred pointer.  He did all the metal work with an oxy-acetaline (I assume jeweler size) torch, and oh, yeah, a lot of files.  But we all know David Chicoine is a grandmaster gunsmith, and after seeing that S&W, a grandmaster welder.
.Victor sells a nice small (jeweler sized) oxy-acetaline torch set up.  Reasonably priced.  I used one years ago to do some silver-soldering; you can weld with it also.  One good thing about gas welding; you can turn up the gas to oxygen ratio so as to deposit more carbon into the
weld (assuming that the extractor has a higher carbon content than plain mild steel), if you only have plain mild steel welding rods to work with.  Remember, any welding done on this part will require heat treating after the welding is done.  Hope this helps.

[Delmonico]

Brownells has nickel steel gas welding rod, I have some up in a drawer, but any welding shop should have it or just clean the fux off a piece of the stick kind.  Remember you can only weld with actelyne not propane or natural gas. 

BTW if you want some better steel rod than just the plain but don't need the expensive nickel rod see if there is a steel shop that makes bridge girders around and see it they will let you have the odds and ends off the submerged arc welder the use to weld the flanges onto the webs with, wonderful stuff.

Also see if they have any scraps from the bearing plates they make where the bridge rests on the piers, pure lead, often it is drill shavings but worth the trouble.

[Dusty Morningwood]

Well, took the extractor to a real fine gunsmith, but he said he was not comfortable doing the welding since he could not guarantee it.  Geez, I hate it when a guy is honest like that, don't you?    A lot of guys would have said , why sure , and then made a hash of the thing and still charged me.  So now off to a welding shop to see what they can do.  I have printed out the comments as a guide, but you know how craftsmen hate to be given any instructions.

[Buffalow Red]

how about mig welding on sxs hindge to tighten up slopey barrel to recever play

[Dusty Morningwood]

I sent the broken extractor to a guy who made me a new one.  Just needs a little final fitting and heat treating.  The broken one is now with another gunsmith who will weld it, so I can have a spare part.