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R. O'Brian
 
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Default Attaching Shotgun ribs...

Traditional double barrels were completely assembled with soft solder (50-50
tin-lead) from day one and many still are today. This required them to be
rust blued since hot bath bluing eats soft solder. In recent years some
double makers have gone to furnace brazing. Those can be hot blued.

The master rib installer for single barrel guns today is Simmons
http://www.simmonsguns.com/ . They attach ribs by silver soldering the
posts to the barrel in a special jig. Then the barrel is placed in their
special machine which mills the tops of the posts to the correct height and
cuts a longitudinal dovetail in each post top. The rib itself has a
matching dovetail on the bottom and slides over the posts. Usually the
receiver end of the rib is fixed to the gun and the muzzle end floats
freely. This is required to allow the barrel to expand from the heat of
firing without causing it to warp upwards.

Poly-Choke http://www.poly-choke.com/ makes one piece aluminum ribs that
are contour milled to match the barrel precisely. They are attached with a
special flexible epoxy adhesive. The flexibility plus the higher expansion
coefficient of aluminum eliminates the heat warpage problem.

Randy

"Gary" wrote in message
ups.com...
In the past they were all silver soldered. Quite a difficult task on a
side by side double as the barrels were also silver soldered together
and trying to add a rib was likely to cause the barrels to come
unstuck. Back when I was involved in gunsmithing George Hoenig of
Boise Idaho was the only gunsmith in the U.S. skilled enough to do that
sort of job. He built multibarrel shotgun/rifles from scratch. Now he
builds $30,000.00 shotguns of his own design.
With the current technological improvements in adhesives you might get
away with some sort of epoxy especially with a nylon or lexan rib. If
you suceed in your efforts you might well have a product you could
market if the price wern't too high. You don't have much to lose by
trying on inexpensive single bbl guns so have fun with it. Good luck.
73 Gary