putting tennons on a swamped barrel

[wizard71]

I building an Isaac Haines gun from components purchased from Wayne Duplap. It has a getz 50 Cal "B" weight barrel. I've already dovetailed in the first tennon about 7" from the breech. My question is this. Looking at the profile of the barrel there doesn’t seem to be enough metal to cut in the center and muzzle end tennons. I’ve laid out the tennons as described in Dixon’s “ The Art of Building the Pennsylvania longrifle”.
A friend told me to silver solder the center tennon (no problem). Any advise on installing the tennon at the muzzle end. Dovetail it in or Solder?

 

[Mike Brooks]

I dove tail them all. That one out on the waist of the swamp near the muzzle is done VERY shallow. In fact I always dove tail all of my tennons pretty shallow. That B weight .50 is a very thin walled barrel and deserves some extra attention when cutting dovetails. BE CAREFULL!
Since I've found this board I've found that lots of guys solder these lugs on all the time. I guess I'm kind of odd as I dovetail tennons into fowler barrels too, and run a little soft solder in afterwords.... :youcrazy:
Don't use high temp silver solder, you'll warp your barrel. Plain old 50/50 is plenty good enough. :thumbsup:

 

[Erzulis boat]

Dovetails can be a lot shallower than most typically think. The very nature of a dovetail resists force in tension to a high degree.
For a muzzleloader that is anchored in a small profile forend, .050 dovetail depth will more than do the job. The additional step of soldering will REALLY do the job.
You can just solder them without dovetails, and if soldered properly, will never fail, but dovetails are just plain nice.
Just concentrate on the dovetail slot in the barrel first, then modify the lug to fit.

 

[THOM]

Just a question -
I was wondering if JB WELD epoxy would work in place of dovetails and solder ???? :hmm: :hmm:
Maybe thin the bottom of the lug; rough up the barrel ; and then epoxy the two together..??
The reason I bring this up is that I don't solder guards on knives anymore - use JB WELD instead and it works great !! :applause: :applause:
Any thoughts on this approach???

Winter well --

 

[Stophel]

Epoxy will not hold nearly as well as solder, AND, epoxy is not friendly to heat. Now, I doubt that you will ever really get your gun barrel "hot", but high temperatures break down epoxy.

 

[wizard71]

Thanks for all the great advise.
I decided to soldered the center tennon and dove tailed the one closet to the muzzle. Then I let a little solder flow down into the dovetail.
The front dovetail ended up a hair less the 3/32 deep. :thumbsup: