Anvil 088: Shotgun Rib Soldering 

Amateur hour here for sure. I worked on more weapons with the military than I care to remember. This included building custom one of kind pistols for retiring flag officers. I made more pistols and rifles than I care to even think of. But I made the barrels and I have a gun drill. What a mess but thats what happens in back yard workshops.

51 minute rabbit hole with Mark. It's going to be a relaxing evening.

The difference between a good craftsman and a bad one is not that the good one never makes a mistake. It's that he/she doesn't let that mistake make it to the customer so if one happens, analyze, correct and finish the job successfully. You are a great teacher Mark....anyone lucky enough to apprentice under you is a fortunate person. Great video and entertaining as always. Thanks!

I've watched a gunsmith do this before. It was a lot smokier than the way it was done here. I think he had used a different solder and an oxy acetylene torch. Thanks for doing it on the Anvil Mark. I know it's a big job and no easier recording it. Thanks

Wow. Someone who knows how to solder! I salute you, sir!

Reminded me of a sign I saw in an old gunsmith’s shop 30 years ago. Gunsmith services. $10 / hour If you watch. $20 / hour If you help. $50 / hour If you worked on it first. $100 / hour

you are right Mark, all the credentials in the world means nothing if you don't have the know how. I have been a professional transmission rebuilder for 40 years, just retired. I have never been to a school in my life. I don't have to brag my work speaks for itself, love your videos, i am a back yard gunsmith also, ha ha,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

"We're all allowed to hunt over here so that's pretty cool". Haha damn right, tell em Mark! Great video!

I'm totally with you on the acid core solder. It may have worked 50 years ago on automotive radiators, (I'm in the vintage auto restoration business) but there's no place for ACID anywhere near a firearm! Great video, as always, Mark! Thanks! ETA: I sometimes am called upon to solder "difficult" antique items at work, and have found that Eastwood's "Tinning Butter" has been a life saver for me. No substitute for cleanliness, but it does work miracles when properly used!

It's good to finally know how to solder together a couple of shotgun barrels. It's good to know that I should never try, as well.

"gunsmithing is an event driven process not a time driven process" pure gold advice there

O. M. G. But even more than the actual topic of this video (the barrels) is the discussion at the end. My son wants to be an engineer. I need to show him just that last bit to give him the best lesson I can from you. Thank you, Mark.

As always Mark, its a pleasure to watch you work. Outstanding.

Burning a Fossil Fuel produces water vapor. We all know what water vapor does to metal while heat is a catalyst. I really enjoyed watching, listening and learning. But we truly learn by doing. As an auto ASE Master Tech since 1978, I was tickled by a comment you made. As an apprentice in a two man shop, the owner taught me invaluable skills and lessons. He had a double off-set u-joint on a drive shaft that needed shortened. In the city we where told by the owner that he would do it, but said he had never made a mistake. My boss, like right at him, picked up the driveshaft and turned to walk out. The machine shop owner yelled something, my boss turn around and said “If you have made a mistake, you have never done anything”. He softly told me, “Or he’s lying... Either way, he not working on this”. RIP Mr. Whitcomb. Great video, I truly did enjoy the content!

If that paste flux was for plumbing and not specifically electronics its probably loaded with a chloride compound of some flavor that reduces to hydrochloric acid under heat just like the liquid stuff. Probably doesn't matter here but it's a frequent trap for young players in electronics, the residue is aggressive enough to slowly eat the thin copper traces off a circuit board.

Only 30 seconds into this and Mark looks really pissed. Oh boy, this is going to be a good one.

Nothing more satisfying than a nice file and deburr. I feel it in my soul...

"The master has failed more times than the apprentice has ever tried" I Tell that to any apprentice in any trade when they say "i messed up" Loved watching this one Thank you Mark and team !

Nice to see that type of channel was still around. I used to watch one very good gunsmith channel, but this gunsmith stopped doing videos about gun repairs and the sad part all his videos he did were removed. Gun repairs and gun smithing is a noble trade, and even for a machinist I learned a few tricks that could be used for jiggs on milling and lathe turning conventional oreven CNC. I'm sure that I will learn more tip that can be use in my trade. And it's by keeping an open mind you learn new trick everyday. finding your channel made my day, great job.

Thanks for the video, Mark. Not exactly the same, but I just soldered the vented rib back onto my Mossberg 5500 with the help of this video. Never soldered before and the joint came out great, the sharpie tip really helped out. Just had to touch up the bluing that got ruined in the process with some cold blue. Couldn't get an exact color match, but doesn't really stand out from the rest of the wear and tear on the finish. All said and done, I'm in the project for about $80 to do something the local gunsmiths were quoting me at least a few hundred to do (more than the value of the shotgun).

Best bit of advice Mark gave to amateurs is you do not melt solder with the torch ,it's the heat from the metal does the work ,.also with any soldering or brazing it is impossible to be overly clean .Finally if tinned correctly the solder will flow like butter . Regards from the UK .

I've now seen why my favorite shotguns cost so dang much money. That's a lot of exacting tolerances to make a double barrel look good. Thanks for showing that. I won't be doing that, but I may ring a double barrel to make sure it's tight and won't have a cartoon outcome if I shoot an unknown sears and roebuck double barrel when I find one.

I worked with both Navy and Air Force vets and they were talking about their abilities and experiences over their careers and how it was dealing with a problems while flying and in the middle of the ocean. While discussing a ground based problem they got into a boisterous discussion on how to best deal with a problem they both shared and the correct way to do it. It finally boiled down to the Air Force guy stating that "my way is best and I have 20 years experience!". The Navy guy said" no, you have 1 years experience 20 times!". I still remember how this stopped the discussion cold and how the room laughed. I state this with apologies to all the guys who have had to make critical decisions on the with only the information and experiences that have touched them up to that point in their life. Mark you are a true craft person and what you show is pure gold!

Your wisdom at the end really struck home for me, thank you.

"You don't need thousands of dollars of high-speed kit to pull this off". Larry Potterfield was offended by that...

That’s a special gun to an old fellow. A real ship of Theseus. Not the finest gun but definitely loved. I would rather have a loved gun with an amazing history then a perfect H&H.

I’m a master diesel mechanic and I can say I have made some mistakes some were minor but others were not . Thanks for the videos I love to watch the guns of years passed being brought back to life again

I love the long vids. Waaay better then cable tv. I would like to see more of these hour long vids.

As an automotive tech my last employer always said "Make all the Mistakes you want, just never repeat them". In simple terms learn from them.

When I'm attempting to do something new to me, I ask myself a lot of questions before I begin, or while I'm working on it. The problem is, I'm often not smart enough, to give myself the correct answers. Lol. Great video as always, Mark.

Been in the trades my for most of my adult life. I have heard that saying a thousand times and it still rings true. " If you aren't making mistakes, you aren't learning anything."

Brilliant, patient, ballsy, practical. Everything you want in a teacher. Beautiful work bro. 👍

Last 3" of my btm rib on 12g muzzle loader popped. £60 At local Gunsmith.1st shot it popped again.Complained.No guarantee on rib resolders!! Read up and did it myself. Checked under rib Filthy so cleaned and soldered still good 10 yrs later! Some "Gunsmiths" Huh!!

Best gun repair channel I have ever wached! Mark has the talent we all wish we had. Mark another great job Sir!

Love the end speech! Cant wait for the next video, great stuff as always!

I used to work in infrastructure grade electronics manufacturing and I can confidently say that flux is your best friend. When in doubt, add more flux.

nice job, I learned from an english gunsmith, Rosin, tin and soapstone. I never thought of using a sharpie. I was also taught to use wire wraps and wedges to keep the ribs on while soldering. I love learning different techniques, thanks for sharing.

Mistakes are easy. It's finding the way back out of the rabbit hole that takes thought, perseverance, and generates experience. Great video.

It’s hard to think about your problems when you are waiting for solder to melt. Cheers. Another great episode.

Hell yeah. I have 45 minutes to kill and then BAM! New Rabbit hole. Hell yeah boys and girls! I've been waiting on this 'sode since you teased us with those ribless barrels in a previous video.

I love your videos Mark. No one that I know does such a good job taping the step by step process as well as you. Thanks!

That's an awesome episode, thank you Mark.

To avoid heat sinking by the steel clamps, I use Nomax sheets to isolate the clamps from the barrels so they heat and solder cleanly!

"Unless you got a pair of stones, a crane and a big cargo net, I don't recommend you do it" ... priceless!

That was a fantastic video especially with the back story. As always it's been my pleasure to watch. Thanks again for posting such a great video.

Thumbs up. Mistakes is how we learn. Best learning is on an old junker with missing or broken parts that you own. 'Tis better to destroy your own parts than destroy parts on a customer's gun. You can build an impressive collection as you restore beater shotguns with issues, rifles with weirdly bent bolts, revolvers out of time, miscellany with broken V springs or stripped screws, etc. It is all fun and a learning process as well.

51 minutes of learning and a nice bourbon !! Excellent Saturday evening !! Thanks for sharing your knowledge .

I enjoyed this one as much as any you have done. Including the point at the end about learning, Thanks Mark.

After 50+ years of working on guns I'm still learning, This was so informative I wish I had an instructor like Mark when I started.

I love the "Sharpie" trick!!! I needed to know that about 5 years ago.. What a P I T A that was to clean up!!! Excellent sir!!!

Outstanding work! Thank you for taking the time to show us so this art so it doesn't die.

Completely under-appreciated channel

Always a pleasure to watch a craftsman work.

I have been interested in the art for a while. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate this look into the art of gunsmiths. I am delighted to have found your channel. Thanks again.

This man is such a treasure. Thank you!

I like the iron bar idea. Lol Keep up the good work boss.

Absolutely loved watching you work on this one Mark, your former career as an Electrician really showed in the prep and quality of soldering (former Electrician myself).

If you are ever in UK, visit the Royal Armouries in Leeds... there is an interesting display on how double rifles and shotguns were soldered up and regulated using copper wire wraps and cut nail wedges. An extremely skilful, if not expensive process..! There are lots of interesting things to see there, particularly if you can get permission to visit the Pattern Room collection!

Great vid, its a demanding fix, I'm very impressed with your skills , you almost make it look easy lol, I have an old exposed hammer shot gun that was given to me ,its sloppy and the rib is coming off it, I was going to hand it into the police to have it destroyed, You have inspired me to give it a new life, it has no value other than as a vehicle to try my hand at restoring it, Thankyou, Cheers Brent

Sharpie stops solder? Oh that is going to be so useful! And hugs to Kant twist clamps.

Finally somebody who knows what a deburring tool is and how to use it

I've been hunting for a side by side to form 1 cut down looking for one with no sentimental or historic value. Your videos are a joy to watch and the bits of advice and hard won wisdom are truly great. Thank you for sharing your time and work with us.

I haven’t soldered in a long time... Nice to see you getting a big job done!

Thanks for taking the time to make and edit the videos! This content is gold!

Just resoldered the barrel wedge lug onto a set of 1870's English percussion barrels and I have to say spending way too long on the prep to make sure it was done right paid off. My advice: clean everything until you think it's perfect, then spend about ten more minutes making sure it really is.

you are the main man, what a great outlook on life, i too have 7 apprentices working for me at the moment, you cant take knowledge with you... keep fighting the good fight.....

I really appreciate the ending thoughts, very Bob Ross.. no mistakes, only negative outcomes and learning opportunities

Absolutely vital information! I learned this the hard way when I did my very first refurbishment on an old Crescent double. The gun had ridden in a pickup, muzzle down and the barrels were no longer even. I thought that I could just square up the muzzle end on my disc sander and before I knew what I did to myself, I had broken through the dam of solder at the ends of the ribs. Panic led to learning, because no way was I going to continue to mess it up even more. I studied for a long time before attempting to fix it. The bigger the glob, the better the job was just not going to work. I went to ETMS after all, and my pride wouldn't let me.

I look forward to all of your videos. But I've been waiting for this, I have a passion for vintage side by side shotguns.

Not a gunsmith, but a long time electronic tech. Your comment regarding cold solder joints is true, and a question I have is why you don't use eutectic (63/37 vs 60/40) solder? Eutectic solder has no paste state making it almost impossible to produce a "cold" solder joint. Price difference is insignificant.

Thank You, I believe I could do that after having seen your video. You are doing the younger generation a great service as this information is not readily available, in limited quantity and of questionable quality.

I'm a plumber and when we used to wipe lead joint we used a black pigment we called plumbers black (original name eh.) for the same reason. I don't have guns (well, I have a 1911 BB gun) or know really anything about guns, I just love to watch skilled people do proper craftsmanship and you sir are in the very top echelon. Love the videos and the information you give when performing your art! Thank you Mark.

Something on the order of fifty five years ago, a Great Uncle of mine who owned exactly two firearms: A) a five shot break top S&W .38S&W identical to one owned by my Maternal Grandfather and B) a "store brand" mule ear, double trigger, double barrel 12gauge, found that the rib on his shotgun had "come loose from the barrels in a couple of places". My uncle "fixed it" utilizing two rusty vises, a couple of, very possibly even then, antique pipe wrenches, and a couple of tubes of what to me at the time seemed to be a "super thing"....J.B. Weld. Please bear in mind that my uncle was a classic bred, born, and raised South Carolina dirt farmer, WWI combat veteran who had managed to make it back home, survived the Great Depression, and fathered the fathers of some of my closest and dearest living blood kin. Did the J.B work?....Well yeah....But I STRONGLY suspect it worked ONLY because that shotgun was rarely fired except during deer and bird season (quail for the most part) and the fact that my uncle was not the person you would want shooting at you during a gunfight with ANY firearm of the day. Because that old shotgun worked as well as it did after my uncle "fixed it", I was more than a little convinced that the ONLY use for J.B. Weld was in the repair of old, broken, double barrel shotguns.....But then there were friends of the family and family members who also had bets going that I would not make it much past six years old. Watching this video brought back yet another childhood memory thanks to an old gun and the realization that it was only by the grace of God that we didn't kill or maim ourselves by fixin' our guns our own selves back then. Keep up the great work you do and keep the videos comin'!!!

Great video on soldering, one thing I learned doing body work with lead solder is if you use acid Flux you have to get every last bit of acid off the metal or it will rust. Some areas you can't get to , so in a year you have rust holes.

I have no real experience as a gunsmith, but I've soldered a lot of copper pipe fittings. Kind of funny, I learned how to solder pipes (braze radiators) from my dad when I was 11 or 12, approximately 40 years ago. He passed away 4 years ago last month. All that to say, a huge rookie mistake (that can be kind of funny sometimes) is not heating the parts to be soldered and trying to melt the solder itself to connect things. Um... added side note. I learned how to wire a house, do sheet rocking, and fix cars from my dad. It helped, because in my late teens I worked in a medium sized hospital, in "Facility/Plant Services" (IE maintenance department). Then went to a career in heavy equipment repair. Both jobs, for their time paid really decent money. Now retired. It just seems today kids don't seem to want to be in blue collar jobs. Love the videos, and have actually been subbed since early in your association with C&Rsenal..

Love these longer videos! Thank you for your time and effort.

What a fantastic trip down the rabbit hole. Thank you Mark.

A pleasure to watch you work, as ever.

Great video! I currently have a side lock hammered 410 I have been tinkering with on and off for years. The plates don't fit correctly, the battels had a dent about 3" from the end, the stock was improperly replaced, and it had been nothing but learning and headaches tinkering with this damn thing. I have learned a lot, and spent several hours correcting whoever was in it before me's mistakes. If it wasn't a passion project, would never have been worth it to fix, kinda like working on an old 22, you have to be doing it because you are learning or sentimental reasons. Always love your videos mark, keep up the good work.

im trying to get into many various repairs and this has tought me a bunch of stuff!! also, i think you have an amazing attitude about how mistakes are made, and how you learn from them!

You are correct about just getting in there and doing it. Some people think a project to death, only to find out when they finally dive into it; it's a piece of cake. Thanks Mark for a very ambitious project. This one is a job that a lot of gunsmiths might turn down.

Thanks for your instructive and enjoyable videos. I've learned a lot, particularly regarding blueing.

I absolutely love your videos. I watch them 2 & 3 times. When i wsnt to chill and watch something being fixed or created i turn to the "Rabbit Hole"

It’s been a pleasure watching you work!

Great video Mark with some great insight on rejoining a vent rib.

Awesome learnin'. My dad was a tinsmith and taught me all manner of soldering and gas welding. Still? I learned some stuff here. Nice work, Mr. Novak.

"Gunsmithing is an event driven process. Not a time driven process.". Love what you said. I'm gonna use that! We could apply this saying to so many aspects of life.

51:19 of pure pleasure and entertainment! Thanks for this. Wish I was your neighbour so I could come over and learn with my eyes. Thanks a lot.

I appreciate your skills, there’s no end to learning. Great video 👍😊🇺🇸

Been a welder/fabricator since I did my apprenticeship in the early 90s, but today I learned as much in 51 minutes as what I did in the 6 months of my apprenticeship in college. Not that my whole apprenticeship was in college as I went into a work-based apprenticeship in a fab-shop, & mainly the theory & exams were taken there. Thanks for the video & clear, understandable explanation. New sub.👍

What a joy to watch this work. Thanks, Mark!

As always, love watching you work!

Mark , tremendous tutorial ! Thank you for the exacting attention to detail in all steps! I’ve learned a lot!

I'm only a wishful, hopeful, aspiring gunsmith... However, I am a certified automotive technician with several decades of experience. The principals of learning are the same. There are two ways to do something. The right way... And again. If you attempt to rebuild an engine and it doesn't work, you pull it back apart until you find a mistake and go again, repeating as necessary until all of the mistakes have been corrected. It will cost you time and money and inconvenience. But, if you learn what you did wrong AND how to correct and subsequently not repeat the problem, you're making process. Eventually, you'll learn how to complete a process without making a mistake. The problem comes when you're engaged in the learning process on "someone else's dime." That will get you fired. I, like my father before me, have been fired from a few jobs while learning how to do it as we went, being able to gain enough experience during the process to be able to keep the third (or fourth lol) job I got. This was a long time ago and I did have a plan and paid attention and respect to the people for whom I worked. I didn't "tear up" too much stuff, it was more of "You're a good worker and you try hard, we just need someone a little more 'self-propelled' who doesn't need constant supervision. Come back if you ever get there." One time, after a couple more failures and a success, I actually did go back to the first place I tried and got a job I actually kept for quite a while, because I really liked the boss and the company as a whole. The secret to it all is "learning how to learn..." How to absorb all the information you can and eventually learn to avoid making the same mistakes twice. I moved around a lot when I was young, out of necessity in harder times and had to put food on my table, whether I knew what I was doing or not. What made me ultimately successful was respect for the employer and knowing when to say when. I only went through that process a couple of times but I gained experience I'd never have gotten any other way. But I never tore anything up like this situation you have, here. If you need a good mechanic, carpenter or blacksmith, let me know. lol...

Just watched this video I've been tinkering around with firearms around 40 years wish I knew as much as you have forgotten good work keep up the video's

Thanks Mark. Always looking to expand my knowledge through new negative outcomes!

Always a pleasure ! Thank you!

I was hoping that I would see my Parker getting fixed. For the record, I inherited it that screwed up.

Man, I love your videos. Very informative, and relaxing to watch.

You’re the man Mr Novak. Big stones run in my family, as always it has been a pleasure.