S&W, JB Weld, the Idea, and the results

[Love Life]

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[mtgrs737]

I have used JB Weld to fix alot of things, it is a epoxy that has steel powder in it for good compression durability. It is a good product to use as a potting agent for concrete anchors. Good luck!

[FN in MT]

Interesting post!

Aint it AMAZING how some oof those old Smiiths can simply keep soldiering on and ON?

I've seen M-28's fed a steady diett of mag loads...that have been Armorer rebuilt two and three times over a 40 yr period.

Once knew a guy who removed the barrel on a well used M-27...then had a Master welder lay a bead on his flame cut area. Then ground it down, finished with a file and stone...screwed in the barrel and away he went.

FN in MT

[imashooter2]

Flame cutting is self limiting. You could have shot it as was until the lock work wore out twice.

[imashooter2]

I'm OK with it, it just appeared that you were saying the gun had to be "repaired" in order to continue shooting it with full power loads and / or extend its life.

[MtGun44]

A sacrificial coating to protect the steel sounds like a fine idea.
Easily replaced when needed. I would think that using JB Weld to
stick on a thin stainless shield would work well, too.

Bill

[fecmech]

I think the welding would be a mistake. I'm no expert but I believe the metal next to a weld becomes a casting. I think the fellow who welded his top strap in effect made it weaker not stronger.

[Wheeler]

I think the welding would be a mistake. I'm no expert but I believe the metal next to a weld becomes a casting. I think the fellow who welded his top strap in effect made it weaker not stronger.

Not to be argumentative but if that were the case, what purpose would welding serve to join two pieces of metal, if it weakened the metal to the sides of the weld?

[376Steyr]

I like the idea of using JB Weld for a cosmetic repair. Just throwing it out there, has anybody ever seen a topstrap cut all the way through by flame cutting?

[rbertalotto]

has anybody ever seen a topstrap cut all the way through by flame cutting

Not "All the way through", but close............


357 Maximum
256 Winchester (Revolver)
22 Jet
And there are issues with the new 327 Ruger round.

[fecmech]

Not to be argumentative but if that were the case, what purpose would welding serve to join two pieces of metal, if it weakened the metal to the sides of the weld?

As long as the part is strong enough to do the job it's an effective way to fabricate something. Again I'm no expert but it's my understanding that when a weld joint fails it's usually not the weld but right next to it which has been weakened by the weld heat. In the case of the weld on a top strap you have a forging (the top strap) that you have heated to the point of melting at the edges of the weld and then filing down the weld (a casting) to the original dimension. If there was any heat treatment of the frame the welding operation negated it. Whatever tensile strength that top strap had before the welding operation it was definitely less afterwards.

[Multigunner]

I was suprised to find flame cutting on the arbor of my 1851 Colt Navy replica, so even gases from BP can cut steel, perhaps even more so due to hard particulates and heavy weight and volume of residue.
I vaguely remember seeing a antique revolver that had a platinum insert dovetailed into the topstrap to prevent flame cutting, I don't remember the make or model.

I would not glue a thin metal guard there, since it could come loose and be propelled by gases from the cylinder gap, with at least enough velocity to cut someones eye.
The blast from that gap can carry alot of energy, depending on the cartridge. No sense in adding a potential projectile to the mix.

[imashooter2]

Not "All the way through", but close............


357 Maximum
256 Winchester (Revolver)
22 Jet
And there are issues with the new 327 Ruger round.

Quite so, but absolutely not with an all steel N frame S&W in .357 Magnum.

Now one of the Scandium guns after the cylinder blast eats through that thin stainless shield... That could be a problem.

[krag35]

Dad had an old Wisconsin single cyl engine which the cyl wall was badly scored. He pulled the head, ran the piston all the way to the bottom, cleaned it up good with carb cleaner. then He mixed up some JB weld and put it around the bottom of the cyl wall, ran the piston to the top, cleaned it off, ran it back down, and let it cure. That was 10+ years ago, and that motor is still running, and still don't smoke. JB weld is good stuff.

[uscra112]

Not to be argumentative but if that were the case, what purpose would welding serve to join two pieces of metal, if it weakened the metal to the sides of the weld?

Depends entirely on the alloy and heat treat status of the parent metal. High carbon high alloy steels usually get brittle next to the weld. Fusion welding them is either not done, or the assembly is heat treated post-weld.

Ordinary low carbon steels are unaffected by welding. Me, I wouldn't weld on an S&W frame, or anything post WW1, but I've welded on several pre-1900 single shots, because they used low carbon steel with case hardening back then, so it's perfectly safe.

Like MTGun44, I Like the idea of a sacrificial coating. Easy to renew.

[MtGun44]

Is it just me or do some of the posters not know that "JB Weld" is a filled epoxy, NOT any
kind of actual welding?

Bill

[Crash_Corrigan]

Back in the early 50's we had bought a two cycle single cylinder lawn mower with a Cyclone Engine made by Wisconsin. After over 17 years of service it blew out the cylinder wall and a hunk of steel over an inch square went missing along with the cooling fin portion.

Well my Dad could fix anything and he set his mind to this project. He laid his hands on some epoxy and he mixed into a few tablespoons full of this epoxy some metal sawdust from a hacksaw that had been used on a cast iron pipe.

He cleaned off the oil drenched sawdust with some carb cleaner and then some brake cleaner and let it dry and did it a few more times before he mixed his magic potion.

He took off the cylinder head (an all day project helped by a plumbers blow torch) and he got the piston below the hole in the side of cylinder.

He made a cardboard template lined with aluminum foil which he clamped onto the exterior of the busted cylinder and after carefully cleaning the interior of the cylinder and the edges of the hole we pasted (I was selected for the size of my tiny fingers) a big gob of this very dark gray goo into the hole and against the aluminum foil and left a gentle bump on the inside of the cylinder.

He then very slowly raised the piston to clear off the bump and retracted it again.
Then using a hair dryer and at low temperature he dried it very carefully and we let it sit for a week in the sun.

Then taking some wet dry cloth emery paper wrapped around a small metal can that pretty much matched the size of the cylinder he gently honed that baby down with gradually finer emery cloth until you could not feel the end of the cylinder wall and the beginning of the patch.

We then removed the cardboard backing and the aluminum foil and slobbered a bunch of new goo onto the outside of the patch. We were looking for strength now and we did not care what it looked like.

We cut up some tin cans and fashioned some really ugly cooling fins and attached those to the outside of the patch to remove the excess heat and went through the drying and cooling ritual again.

This whole deal took 3 weekends to finish and when we finally reassembled the engine with a few new parts and painted it up it looked weird but not too bad.

Hillbilly egineering at it's best in Upstate NY in 1956. Being a ripe and strong 13 years old kid it was my job to mow the lawn. All two acres of it.

It grew rampant and fast. After 4 weeks of not being mown it was all I could do to just mow a foot wide strip at a time and forget about the entire 21" wide deck of the mower.

The silly motor would just stall out and it was a pain with a clothesline and wooden handle to wrap the end of the drive shaft pulley a couple of times and get the engine started.

This started a life time appreciation of spray Ether cans. Always keep a large towel or blanket soaking in a bucket of water handy for those blowbacks can and have burned up cars, garages, mowers and people.

It took me pretty much the whole weekend just to mow this overgrown 2 acres to end up with 5 inch tall grass. During the following two weekends in the spring of '56 I got this alleged lawn down to the normal 3" tall fescue.

I never had to fertilize nor water or add anything to get this stuff to grow. Later during the hot months of summer the growth rate would stop and it could go 2 or 3 weeks between trims but the blades of grass got thinner and lighter and color changed away from that bright and healthy spring color.

That patch held up until '59 when Dad assembled a 1939 Henderson four cylinder motorcycle engine onto a discarded commercial golf course lawn mower deck and with a confusing array of pulleys and belts and a hydraulic cylinder or two devised a lawn mower from hell.

This thing had drive wheels and a 3 speed transmission. The front wheels were 10 inches in diameter and rears came off a 24" Schwinn bike from the dumps.

He found a very long and heavy duty blade and got a blacksmith to change the angles some and it ended having a 32" swath mowed at anywhere from 1 1/2" to a very long 8" height.

This was good and bad. It was good in that nothing; and I mean nothing could bog this motor down and get it to stall.

It was bad in that Dad now enlarged the mown area of the property to include another 2 acres which had been allowed to grow wild for years. It had up to 5" diameter trees growing on it.

I was encouraged to cut down the trees and dig out the stumps and anything up to about 3" diameter was taken care of by this Schwarzenhnegger Motorcycle engine powered motor.

I had to wear ear plugs to operate it and Dad treated me really well and devised a mower trailer that had a tractor seat, an old car axle that he shortened down some to have only a 50" wide track at the rear and a quick detach so I could detach the riding seat and trailer and get into the tighter spots. He even devised a hand brake for the trailer tires which ended up to be a standard 15" auto wheel and old tires. The ancient hand push mower with the patched cylinder was still used for the really tight spots and around the roots of trees etc. Bother mowers were still running strong in 2004.

Even mowing 4 acres of lawn now was a breeze and it took less than 1/4 of the time I used to need to cut only 2 acres with a push mower.

Eventually he devised a removeable mower deck and he attached a trailer hitch ball to the tractor seat axle so we could now use it as a tractor.

Then we made a trailer out of a WWII surplus bomb dolly and I began a business in delivering dairy products every morning during the summer for the city people who came up to the Yiddish Alps from Brooklyn.

This thing finally was really an outlandish contraption which could run at about 25 miles an hour on a dirt or paved roadway or gravel track. During the summer months I made a pile of money and a few years later when I hit 16 I bought my first real motorcycle.

And I am proud to say that at 68 I still ride my motorcycle all around Vegas all year long. No snow or ice out here.

I sure miss Dad. We did not always see eye to eye and I was much smarter than him when I was 13 to 17 years old. At about age 25 I realized what a wonderful and caring parent and teacher he was.

He taught me how to plane a door with a hand tool, to weld a joint with a welder or a soldering iron,

how to swing a hammer, measure, saw, all manner of plumbing including cutting pipe, making threads, planning out a job, estimating costs, working with cast iron and cooper pipe, drilling metal,

using a tap correctly to thread a hole in metal and to cut threads onto a piece of metal, electrical planning, installation, wiring a house, a car, a motorcycle, painting, drywall installation, taping, seaming, setting and measuring for installation of asphalt tiles, vinyl tiles, ceramic tiles, finishing, finish carpentry, framing a house, setting mortar, building a brick wall, installing and removing drainage pipes and the best job of all....honeydipping a full septic tank.

Thanks Dad.

[leftiye]

Great idea! Plus, if and when the JB weld gets blown out of the groove, just put some more in there. I'm a gonna do that to my Ruger .357 Maximum.

[imashooter2]

Is it just me or do some of the posters not know that "JB Weld" is a filled epoxy, NOT any
kind of actual welding?

Bill

It's you. The welding discussion flows from post #4.

[songdog53]

Seems you have hit on something with they JB Weld. Knew was good stuff but never thought about it using it to fill plasma cut top strap. As many have stated when it goes is easy to replace it.