Make a pistol Trigger Guard from sheet brass

[ChuckJonesWagon]

This is my first attempt to make a pistol Trigger Guard (TG) from sheet brass. I know it's comparatively less costly (if you factor time in the equation) to just buy a cast brass TG, but I've not had good success with those as both a buttcap and a TG have voids in them that caused cracks. Then, they won't solder back together which indicates they are not truly brass but some other junk metal.

Anyway, my initial piece making I was just going to bend this lollipop piece 90-degrees and brass color solder it to the trigger bow. But then after holding parts together, I realized my thinking was wrong.

Here's pics of the initial pieces I made (broken cast pieces at top, my sheet brass pieces at bottom. And just to back up and clarify I made the trigger bow from bending (anneal first) a cut piece of brass around a wooden form I shaped from scrap maple. :

Well, after I made the bow and the front "foot" piece, I realized it would not be correct. I needed the inside of the TG to have a "foot" pieced in there.....like this TG from TOTW:

So (and I hope you can follow my explanations here) I took my original piece that I cut (lollipop and foot) as in 1st pic below and bent it\filed it to attach as I show in the second pic below, and finally in the third pic below, I cut a slot in the foot so it will fit over the top of the bow and snug up against the lollipop bend.

Now, the trick will be to hold these three pieces together in order to solder....and then on the inside of the bow, solder on a fourth piece so I can get the foot shaped right. I may solder on the inside piece with the others.....not sure yet.

 

[Phil Coffins]

You’re on your way, keep at it.

 

[Clark Badgett]

This is my first attempt to make a pistol Trigger Guard (TG) from sheet brass. I know it's comparatively less costly (if you factor time in the equation) to just buy a cast brass TG, but I've not had good success with those as both a buttcap and a TG have voids in them that caused cracks. Then, they won't solder back together which indicates they are not truly brass but some other junk metal.

You couldn’t get the parts to solder because you didn’t prep the joints correctly and per you earlier mention, you went too hot.

So long as the area to be soldered is clean, prepped properly and the metals to be joined do not have a melting point lower than the solder, they can be soldered.

 

[ChuckJonesWagon]

Well, I have the 4 front pieces brass soldered together. I don't think I have any voids once I file it down and clean it up.

These two pics are the "outside" and the inner foot. Now, for the other half it's a matter of cutting\shaping\soldering that piece on. In addition, I have to solder on a tab on this front piece. Tabs don't need to be soldered all that strong and you won't see it. So, I'm going to just solder the tab on with some plumbers solder as that way I won't accidentally un-do the current work.

 

[ChuckJonesWagon]

You couldn’t get the parts to solder because you didn’t prep the joints correctly and per you earlier mention, you went too hot.

So long as the area to be soldered is clean, prepped properly and the metals to be joined do not gave a melting point lower than the solder, they can be soldered.

That may be. I think the "brass" in those cast parts have a lot of alloy's in them. I did some reading on soldering "pot metal" and a very low temp solder is used to repair that kind of metal....like the solder melts at 350-degrees. The brass solder I'm using melts at 1,350 degrees.

 

[Clark Badgett]

That may be. I think the "brass" in those cast parts have a lot of alloy's in them. I did some reading on soldering "pot metal" and a very low temp solder is used to repair that kind of metal....like the solder melts at 350-degrees. The brass solder I'm using melts at 1,350 degrees.

You are not soldering at 1350, that is brazing. Hard silver soldering is similar. Regular soldering is low temperature.

 

[bud in pa]

Try Brownell's Hi-Force 44 solder. melts with a propane torch and is extremely strong. That's what I use on my muzzleloaders and sights on friends modern pieces.

 

[ChuckJonesWagon]

Try Brownell's Hi-Force 44 solder. melts with a propane torch and is extremely strong. That's what I use on my muzzleloaders and sights on friends modern pieces.

Mapp has temps are roughly 3600F. Propane is roughly 200-degrees less. Both can be used for the higher temperature of melting silver solder. I prefer Mapp.

 

[ChuckJonesWagon]

I have half of it done. I'm waiting to acquire more sheet brass as I don't have a piece long enough to make the tail. (And I swore I had a piece.....but I can't find it.)

I have a few small occlusions that I may be able to make "go away". I also filed one area just a tad too close.....but it's not deep and won't affect the strength. I'll get to the tail when I have the metal.

Anyway.....progress.

 

[Rob M.]

Great job ! Mine are the easy style . Just cut them out and bend them ...

 

[sportster73hp]

I like where you are going. Have a couple of pistol projects and don’t like available castings

 

[ChuckJonesWagon]

Great job ! Mine are the easy style . Just cut them out and bend them ...

Those will work. Trade gun TG's. I built a flintlock rifle for a smaller person. (Youth), 12.5"LOP and 30" barrel. I used the Trade Gun buttstock style. Since this was a smaller rifle I didn't want to use the full size trade rifle TG. So I bought the full size, hammered the trigger bow flat....then made it smaller and cut off the excess. Worked great.

 

[ChuckJonesWagon]

I'm still waiting for my sheet brass to come in, but I thought I'd post a pic of my build as it is now. I wanted to see how the look and fit of my partially completed TG would be so I put the build in my vice upside down, held the half-finished TG down with a Conical, then flipped the pic.

Anyway...moving along

 

[ChuckJonesWagon]

So, I finally got my sheet brass to work on the TG. This sheet brass is .080 thick FYI. I measured the width needed where I'm going to silver solder onto the existing TG that I have built so far. This piece I'm going to use is 4" long. Probably a little longer than I need, but it's easy to cut off.....much harder to add on.

They I lay out the shape of this, and because of the amount of brass that needs removed, I chose to hacksaw it off instead of filing it down. I still file, but less metal to file is good.

Now, once I have the width, shape, and length I want I don't want to solder on an .080 thick piece to the .080 thick TG. It needs to be smaller. I could just solder it on, then shape it after that.....but instead I chose to file the part that's going to get soldered down. I was going to go to .040, but I left a little "meat" to work with once it's soldered.

Here's the two pieces that I will (hopefully) join.

You can see here how they will be soldered together. I will first shape the tail flat to fit as close as I can to the TG. Then that little "tent shape" piece of the TG will still show. BTW, you can see on the left where I soldered on two .080 pieces. Right now the one piece I've filed down to .060 and I think it's still to "fat". I'll work on that once I get the tail soldered on. Hopefully this will go well. This is my first attempt at a TG.

And just a tip if you're going to file off any thickness on a piece you're going to attach. Filing down like this can (and usually for me) lead to filing more off one end than the other. Since my target thickness was .050, the one side was just about there. So, again, it's tough to "see" what you're filing at times and I don't want the close part to go thinner. So, I mark the section that's very close so that when I file the thicker side down, the marker should stay indicating I'm not filing that part. Anyway, that's what I do.

 

[ChuckJonesWagon]

I fired up the Mapp gas today. Cleaned all contact points with Acetone first, followed by flux that is specific to silver solder temps. Ordinary plumber's flux does nothing.

I failed to take pics of the setup. I was on a roll. Using vice grips and two pieces of scrap metal, I clamped the two pieces of metal onto each side of the TG where I did my previous soldering. I don't want to take the chance that heat would travel there and "un-solder" what I've worked on. Then I clamped the two pieces together with a soldering vice, heat....apply solder.

I've done some rough cleanup so far. Still need to bend the tail to fit the stock, but that's an easy thing to do.

I'll post the install on my gun build thread when I get to that point. If you have been thinking of doing something like this, take a stab at it. It was my first one so I can't say if it's easier or more difficult than cleaning up a purchased rough cast piece. However, I do have the satisfaction of knowing I did it from sheet brass.

FWIW

 

[Jappo]

.

 

[ChuckJonesWagon]

I guess Jappo didn’t have much to say.

 

[Jappo]

I guess Jappo didn’t have much to say.

I was going to ask where I could find the brass. But I googled it and found some.

 

[ChuckJonesWagon]

I was going to ask where I could find the brass. But I googled it and found some.

I got mine from Track of the Wolf. Amazon also has sheet brass but prices are all over the place and you have to pay attention to the sizes one each.

 

[Jappo]

I got mine from Track of the Wolf. Amazon also has sheet brass but prices are all over the place and you have to pay attention to the sizes one each.

That's where I ordered from Amazon. Hope its the correct thing.