DIY Gunsmithing Gone Wrong

I can understand wanting to fix the crack, but use the proper process and procedure. Mig is not the process. TIG is what you want and use heavy copper backing bar. At best now you could cut the turkey #### section out and begin slow buildup till you can blend the sides together. It would also help to sandblast the whole thing before you put any heat to it. Once you weld it up it would be best to get a machinist to mill everything to the proper dimensions
 
Good old fashioned gas weld with a coat hanger as filler wire after a solvent soak and bake out. Controlled heat input and stepped heat and deposition is key to welding cast materials. A skilled gas welder could makes the welded joint every bit, but no more stronger than the parent metal, causing none of the distortion, hard spots, weakening of heat affected zone, etc. that may be problematic with other welding methods, including GTAW (tig).
 
Only real fix for it was replacement. Not even worth trying to fix. Anybody that has handled a p22 slide would know it's made out of garbage from the start. Some unknown pot metal.
I would personally have riveted a patch on :) lol
 
Anyad Pitchaya said:
Good old fashioned gas weld with a coat hanger as filler wire after a solvent soak and bake out. Controlled heat input and stepped heat and deposition is key to welding cast materials. A skilled gas welder could makes the welded joint every bit, but no more stronger than the parent metal, causing none of the distortion, hard spots, weakening of heat affected zone, etc. that may be problematic with other welding methods, including GTAW (tig).
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Tig, gas, mig doesn't matter as much, the trick is to find the right filler metal - i believe those slides are a cast aluminum/zinc alloy. Wrong filler metal - no sticky. Not any easy task, cheaper to buy a new one than pay a welder to do it. www.muggyweld.com they have a 350 deg. low temp solders for pot metal and dissimilar metals that is rated up to 20,00psi tensile. That's what I would've tried - then thrown it out when it didn't work...
 
tigrr said:
It's more than just cracked now!! It could be done but with proper gas shielding, carbon strips, preheated and a mig gun. Then the inner rails would have to be re-machined. In 33 years of welding the only thing that is impossible to weld is a cast aluminum sewing machine base, that is saturated with mineral oil all the way through.
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33 years of welding and you would choose MIG over TIG? interesting. Also, it wouldn't need a pre-heat. But a heat sink wouldn't be a bad idea.
 
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Keep the ruined slide for filler material and weld up the next one when it cracks too. My wife has one of these and it's never inspired much confidence. She'll never shoot it enough for the slide to crack though, so I guess it's fine to have around.
Kristian
 
It think the real screw up was with Walther for putting those pot-metal slides out there to begin with. Its not uncommon for a P-22 slide to crack. Such a good name lent to such a sub-par product.

Apparently blasting the slide with some sort of Star Wars laser gun was the second mistake.
 
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