Chamber repair

L

Licensed to kill

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Peace Country Alberta
I have two .410 sxs’s with buggered up chambers (scarred and pitted) Been pondering how one might fix them. I have two considerations. One, clean the chamber extremely well, smear the chamber with a high compression epoxy (JB weld or something similar), then rechamber with a chamber reamer. The other thought is to ream out the chamber to the size of the rim, then make a “liner” out of an alloy with high burst strength, install the liner blank, then rechamber. Liner blank installed similar to relining the whole barrel. Has anyone heard of a way to repair buggered up chambers on a shotgun??
 
Usually, it's not so much the chambers, as the rest of the barrels are too thin, pitted, bulged, &c.

I haven't got a clue, unless you can ream the chamber out to 28 gau. then epoxy in a 28 gau. >.410 adapter in place. I do think that the steel epoxy, then re-chambering, route has merit, as long as the guns have some value. If they are cheap SxS .410's, then really, what is the point?

I presume the bores are not pitted, too thin, Damascus, &c.?

Interested to see what everyone proposes though.
 
I don't know anything about resleeving, beyond than the concept itself.... but isn't the chamber part of the sleeving process? i.e. why sleeve just the chamber - would the cost not be similar (or cheaper) than just doing the whole barrel?

or is it that a .410 sleeve does not exist?
 
sean69 said:
I don't know anything about resleeving, beyond than the concept itself.... but isn't the chamber part of the sleeving process? i.e. why sleeve just the chamber - would the cost not be similar (or cheaper) than just doing the whole barrel?

or is it that a .410 sleeve does not exist?
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Correct about the chamber being part of a barrel sleeve, however, that is with rifle cslibres/barrels. A shotgun barrel has no where near enough barrel wall to accommodate a sleeve unless you were reducing the bore diameter (like a briely insert).
 
Licensed to kill said:
Correct about the chamber being part of a barrel sleeve, however, that is with rifle cslibres/barrels. A shotgun barrel has no where near enough barrel wall to accommodate a sleeve unless you were reducing the bore diameter (like a briely insert).
Click to expand...
Ahh! yes - of course.
 
Is this a DIY project, or are you paying someone to do it? You'll easily exceed the value of the guns in labour alone. If it's DIY, what's your skill level?

A lot depends on how much metal you have to play with around the chambers, and the condition of the bores.

If the bores are clean, you could reverse sleeve; ream out the existing chambers, silver solder a steel insert and rechamber that.

If the bores are toast along with the chambers, then sleeving the entire barrel would be the option, though it's ungodly expensive. The barrels are cut off just ahead of the chambers, leaving essentially a monoblock, and new tubes silver soldered in place.
 
I'm just trying to imagine the machining setup for this operation. I suppose if you had a milling vise attachment for a lathe you could do it. Or possibly if you had a milling machine that had a horizontal milling function...
Being as you are working near the end of the barrel it's not as though you would need a barrel wall thickness gauge or anything.
 
I've lined barrels; never just chambers.
I suppose that the chambers could be reamed out and liners installed. The OD of the liners would be determined by the OD of the barrels at the breech. The liner would be chambered; could be done prior to bonding in place. I'd make the liners from 4130 Cr-Mo tube.
Whether lining the chambers of two .410 doubles would make sense would depend to a great deal on the value of the guns. If cheap guns from the get go, DIY might be the only way to go. If a 'smith is being paid to do the job, the guns had best be valuable ones.
 
if any thing at all this is the correct fix
you ream the chambers with a 20 ga reamer then you buy 410 chamber inserts and red loctie them in the 20 ga chambers
also not as easy as it sounds as with most chambering you must remove as much metal as possible with a drill bit .
reamer 300-350$
410 inserts 100-125 $ ea
those are your basic costs
 
You've got nothing to lose by DIY polishing or honing the existing chambers to see if that solves the problem. Bear in mind the area that surrounds the metal case head is the critical area - the rest of the chamber can be in pretty rough shape and the cases can still extract.
How are the bores???
 
9.3mauser said:
Is this a DIY project, or are you paying someone to do it? You'll easily exceed the value of the guns in labour alone. If it's DIY, what's your skill level?

A lot depends on how much metal you have to play with around the chambers, and the condition of the bores.

If the bores are clean, you could reverse sleeve; ream out the existing chambers, silver solder a steel insert and rechamber that.

If the bores are toast along with the chambers, then sleeving the entire barrel would be the option, though it's ungodly expensive. The barrels are cut off just ahead of the chambers, leaving essentially a monoblock, and new tubes silver soldered in place.
Click to expand...
Yeah, you need to look at, and understand, a lot of different factors to make up your mind whether this is going to be a path worth following.

What's the gun worth to you? Does it actually have enough sound metal to withstand the pressures of the cartridge if you open up the chamber (consider the liner to be of zero strength, which is not actually correct, but is a good place to make decisions from for safety's sake).

If you are paying someone to do the work, it'll likely cost you far more than just buying a new firearm. If you have a metal lathe, and some skills using it, you can make do and put a very thin, custom liner in to the chamber, I would suggest taking a close look at the various stocked sizes of machine reamers, that are barely larger than the chamber dimensions, using one of those to open up the damaged chamber. and making a liner, either sweated in (soldered) or set with permanent Loctite, etc., then produce your own reamer to set the chamber dimensions (a "D-Bit Reamer" is a pretty easy project, and it only has to work once!)
 
Jonnyofalltrades said:
I'm just trying to imagine the machining setup for this operation. I suppose if you had a milling vise attachment for a lathe you could do it. Or possibly if you had a milling machine that had a horizontal milling function...
Being as you are working near the end of the barrel it's not as though you would need a barrel wall thickness gauge or anything.
Click to expand...
Could do it just with a lathe and a drill press. Make a custom spider that fits both barrels ideally counterbalancing the weight nicely. Then attach it to the barrel. Make two inserts, one the size of the chamber and one the size of the choke, centered for both. Put it between centers in the lathe and cut the spider true to that set up. Now set your steady rest.

Then it is just a matter of grabbing the one end with a 4 jaw chuck and machining it off the steady rest.
 
tiriaq said:
I would avoid silver solder - it requires red heat. Barrels are often soft soldered together.
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Ayup! Most silver bearing solders do, though there are some low alloy versions that will work at far lower temperatures. Brownell's 440 solder comes to mind...

One expects that the fella going in to an operation like this, has done at least some of his own homework!

IIRC, one of the South or Central American Countries did a caliber conversion on their main rifles, that involved a soft soldered in insert, in the chamber. These became 'known' for the pressure and heat of firing, cutting away the soft solder that was used.

Probably not gonna be that much of an issue at shotgun pressures, but it became one at rifle round pressures.
 
I had bought what used to be a 8mm Mauser on CGN - previous owner intended to ream bore out to be a wildcat 338x57 - that .330" reamer did not clean out the pits - so he had .350" done - intending to go as wilder 357/358x57 - at which point he was told it was already too thin to rifle - so what I had bought - a very nice looking German made sporter, with a smooth bore .350" - so assuming that started at .323" or thereabouts - .330" was NOT enough to completely get rid of the pits, but .350" was. I have no clue how deep the pits are that you are concerned about, but anticipate that they might be that deep.
 
tiriaq said:
I would avoid silver solder - it requires red heat. Barrels are often soft soldered together.
Click to expand...
I would think a low content silver solder (up to around 3%-4%) would be fine - only working up to about 450°. Brazing something like that would be VERY difficult! even if you separated the barrels....
 
There are silver bearing solders that have low melting points. Some are alloyed with cadmium. The Brownells product is mentioned above. While a low temp. solder (with or without silver) can be used for installing liners, bonding agents like Loctite products or even JB Weld work very well and are a lot easier to use.
 
tiriaq said:
There are silver bearing solders that have low melting points. Some are alloyed with cadmium. The Brownells product is mentioned above. While a low temp. solder (with or without silver) can be used for installing liners, bonding agents like Loctite products or even JB Weld work very well and are a lot easier to use.
Click to expand...
well yes - that solder has 4% silver - still solder (though on the relative high temp side)

I think my problem (my OCD problem) is that when someone says to silver solder something or they want something silver soldered - they are not really indicating what they really want done .... is the part to be soldered or brazed? i.e. "silver soldered" does not have enough context to infer understanding.

i.e. if you take "silver soldered" to mean any solder with some silver in it .... you can absolutely silver solder a couple of ribs onto a Damascus double.... if you take it to mean solder with greater than 10% silver then you are into brazing temperatures.
 
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