I did a brazing job on an old parlor rifle with a broken receiver
today and used the brazing rod with the blue flux on it. It went OK,
but it would have gone better if I could have really cleaned up the
surfaces. A two part question. How do you clean up old rusty metal
for brazing. Is there a certain brand of flux that's worked better
for you than the coated rods?

RWL

surfaces. A two part question. How do you clean up old rusty metal
for brazing. Is there a certain brand of flux that's worked better
for you than the coated rods?

Bead blasting works pretty well as does grinding out the cracks and drilling
the ends. Chemical methods may induce hydrogen embrittlement, not so good
for things that can kill you when they break.
I use a GasFluxer at work. Not cheap but it does an excellent job and I am
using their low fuming bronze. Works for silver soldering as well. If you
braze commercially or a lot, this is good purchase.
http://www.gasflux.com/
Some guys TIG braze, but the non-low fuming rod is hard to around here

I hope the repair you did was for a display rifle.
--
Stupendous Man,
Defender of Freedom, Advocate of Liberty.

On Wed, 10 Oct 2007 05:50:05 -0700, "Stupendous Man"
wrote:

surfaces. A two part question. How do you clean up old rusty metal
for brazing. Is there a certain brand of flux that's worked better
for you than the coated rods?

I hope the repair you did was for a display rifle.

I'm pretty sure it will only ever be a wall hanger, and that's what I
recommended to the friend I did it for. Since it was only ever
intended for CB caps, I suspect that the repair I did would be
sufficient for those. If the owner really did want to shoot it, I
think I'd braze on a reinforcing plate on both sides of the break in
the receiver frame. As it is, the hammer spring is missing, and I'd
need to make one of those before it would be in firing condition. I'd
need to get a parts diagram for a Flobert Parlor Rifle before I could
do that repair since I've never seen the inside of one of these
before.

Flux. What flux do you all use for brazing?

RWL

Flux. What flux do you all use for brazing?

RWL


I use Borax. I used to use commercial fluxes but I started using Borax
about twenty years ago and haven't really needed anything better.

I've got a friend who uses the rod with the blue flux on it, it works
well but it's always a case of not enough flux to start with and then
too much once you get started.

John