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
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.
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
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
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