Bighorserider
40 Cal
I have an old Wm Moore style pistol, and the thimble came off. I've built a few guns but have never soldered a brass thimble to a steel under rib. I'm looking for suggestions.
How to solder on a ramrod thimble
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jackley
40 Cal.
What I would do is clean the thimble and the rib where it goes real well, even sanding these areas to get them clean. Get some liquid silver solder, its just powdered solder in a tube with flux. wrap the barrel on both sides of the thimble with wet rags. keeping the water away from joint put the solder on and heat till it melts. Use the solder sparingly the flux will take off the browning. As soon as its set cool with wet rags.
Clean the parts. Tin them with regular lead solder. Flux with rosin. Jig it in place with a metal round and wire. Heat the assembly, barrel and all, with a propane torch until the solder just melts . You will probably need to refinish.
That said if everything is clean. Flux with rosin. Jig, heat, hope for the best.
That said if everything is clean. Flux with rosin. Jig, heat, hope for the best.
Pete G
76 Cal.
Make certain to use a low temp solder. You don't want to detach the rib in the process.
I had rib and thimble problems with a half stock rifle I built last summer. The first time the rib and both thimbles were done together and looked good.....for a week. Then the rib came loose. My fault, I forgot to tin the rib along with the barrel before soldering them. I cleaned everything up then tinned both rib and barrel, clamped the thimbles and rib to the barrel and redid the soldering. Again everything looked good....for a month. While shooting it, the forward thimble came loose. Not wanting to go through the whole mess again, I got out the JB weld, cleaned the rib and thimble and applied a coat to both. Some JB squeezed out but I let it set till it began to harden, then scraped the excess off the joint with an Exacto knife. You can't tell the presence of the JB weld and its held up this time. Not traditional but unless you tell some one they won't know. I have a half stock English percussion fowler missing the front thimble and am going to do the same for it. I sure don't want to fool around and mess up an original gun by trying to resolder it.
