using JB weld on a knife

B

BITEME

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has anyone ever used JB weld to put a clip on a let's say aluminum/alox handle I tried epoxy doesn't hold up?
 
Jb weld is good for filling holes/gaps but not for anything under stress. Better off, screwing, bolting, or using a true weld.
 
so much for that idea,drilling and tapping here we come,Thanks guys.
 
yablanowitz said:
Just so you will know, "J B Weld" is a brand of epoxy.
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On other forums, I have seen a few guys advocate using it to "attach" sights or scope rails on a shotgun. I have an old 16ga single shot I was thinking about trying to JB Weld some rifle sights onto to use it for deer here in VA in the counties where it is shotgun only. Your opinion please???
 
E.K.Tryon said:
On other forums, I have seen a few guys advocate using it to "attach" sights or scope rails on a shotgun. I have an old 16ga single shot I was thinking about trying to JB Weld some rifle sights onto to use it for deer here in VA in the counties where it is shotgun only. Your opinion please???
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i use lots of jb weld on things in the bodyshop, and know that it is completely capable of holding the sights on a shotgun, just so long as you rough up the surface enough, and don't get it too hot while shooting it. just make sure to get some rough grit sand paper and give it a rough profile to hang on to and you should be fine.

thanks
sam
 
It's just epoxy. It will do what most other epoxies will do, no more.
 
I’m always surprised at the amount of people that think some kind of glue is actually the way to fix something. Sure, if you bust the handle off yer coffee mug, break out the crazy glue, but expecting a clip to stay attached to your knife or to put your friggin’ sights on a barrel???

You silver solder sights. It doesn’t take any longer to properly solder the sight than to prep/mix/apply/wait to cure epoxy. Matter of fact, it’s quicker. The drawback, if you use epoxy, is that you will be back to square one the first time you “bump” that sight good. This will inevitably occur when you are out in your blind and you’ve spotted that trophy you’ve been waiting on for years and in your haste to get the gun mounted, you bang the barrel during your “quick draw”. I’ve actually seen something similar but the idiot in question JB Welded his SCOPE RINGS on. Thankfully, the failure occurred while in camp. His rifle fell over, causing the scope to part company with the barrel. The ensuing mass hysteria when everyone realized what he had done was priceless. That’s the kind of thing you never live down.

Even if you are not equipped to hard solder/braze, you should surely have (borrow?) a cheap propane torch and could at least soft solder a sight on? Silver solder is available in soft/med/hard alloys, the difference being their melting points. It’s actually very simple and the only trick is mating the parts tightly, using flux and not overheating the joint. Practice on some scrap pieces of similar thickness before you tackle your gun and don’t ever quench a barrel, let it air cool. Make sure you line it up correctly!

As already mentioned, drilling and tapping is the way to go for a clip, especially with dissimilar materials.
 
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I have been tossing this idea back and forth for years, adding sights to my old single shot 16 ga to carry for deer. I have been electronics soldering for over 40 years so believe me I am about this >> far away from trying it. The thing that worries me is the steel of the barrel and possible the alloy of the sight bases. Dissimilar metals. Spending $45 for Marble Arms bases to practice on makes me a tad nervous.
I am going down to Gander tomorrow and start with new optical orange replacement front bead. Then I'll hit the range and see how it does.
 
Ditch_Digger said:
I’m always surprised at the amount of people that think some kind of glue is actually the way to fix something. Sure, if you bust the handle off yer coffee mug, break out the crazy glue, but expecting a clip to stay attached to your knife or to put your friggin’ sights on a barrel???

You silver solder sights. It doesn’t take any longer to properly solder the sight than to prep/mix/apply/wait to cure epoxy. Matter of fact, it’s quicker. The drawback, if you use epoxy, is that you will be back to square one the first time you “bump” that sight good. This will inevitably occur when you are out in your blind and you’ve spotted that trophy you’ve been waiting on for years and in your haste to get the gun mounted, you bang the barrel during your “quick draw”. I’ve actually seen something similar but the idiot in question JB Welded his SCOPE RINGS on. Thankfully, the failure occurred while in camp. His rifle fell over, causing the scope to part company with the barrel. The ensuing mass hysteria when everyone realized what he had done was priceless. That’s the kind of thing you never live down.

Even if you are not equipped to hard solder/braze, you should surely have (borrow?) a cheap propane torch and could at least soft solder a sight on? Silver solder is available in soft/med/hard alloys, the difference being their melting points. It’s actually very simple and the only trick is mating the parts tightly, using flux and not overheating the joint. Practice on some scrap pieces of similar thickness before you tackle your gun and don’t ever quench a barrel, let it air cool. Make sure you line it up correctly!

As already mentioned, drilling and tapping is the way to go for a clip, especially with dissimilar materials.
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There's a lot of people in this world that would make things much worse for themselves attempting to tap/drill holes so small ( and not to mention straight ), and while soldering isn't exactly a complex task, something about soldering sights on seems a little tricky to me--getting the sight to seat properly on the barrel before the solder sets being the big issue I would worry about.

Given all these issues, I would think that spending $5 and 5 minutes on an epoxy so you can just go out and use the gun without risking making things worse ought to be a good solution, and if you bump your sight off all you need to do is glue it back on until you can get a professional to fix your gun. I'm all for the DIY spirit, but there are some things I'd rather have a professional do.

Doing things right is always the better option, but if you don't have the skillset required to do so, and you know you don't, using something like epoxy is really not that bad of an idea. To me it's kind of like patching a tire instead of just getting a new one; you're going to have to take care of it again later, but for millions of people it's been a perfectly good solution to get their cars going again.

Oh, and as far as JB Weld vs regular epoxy... JB Weld has one of the highest bond strengths I've seen ( just going by spec sheet ) and it is a lot more ideal to use on metals than a lot of other epoxies. In the end though, it's just a brand, and Loctite and others surely offer their own "metal" epoxy; the main purpose of it is to make stronger bonds on metal surfaces than on plastic or wood, and because when it hardens it blends in better with the metal and can be sanded/finished to the same overall finish.

All that being said, I think you'd put too much stress on the joint and it would just be falling off intermittently. Might take a few months, but for the most part every epoxy I've tried tends to give in when put on something that is a moving part, or that has stresses put on it, so I think the constant flexing of the clip would eventually just pop it off one day.

Soldering sounds like the way to go on this one to me. Tapping and drilling isn't the most complex thing to do, but I'm imaging holes that are the size they are on my Benchmade, and I know I'd worry about snapping a tap off.
 
E.K.Tryon said:
I have been tossing this idea back and forth for years, adding sights to my old single shot 16 ga to carry for deer. I have been electronics soldering for over 40 years so believe me I am about this >> far away from trying it. The thing that worries me is the steel of the barrel and possible the alloy of the sight bases. Dissimilar metals. Spending $45 for Marble Arms bases to practice on makes me a tad nervous.
I am going down to Gander tomorrow and start with new optical orange replacement front bead. Then I'll hit the range and see how it does.
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Silver soldering is similar to electrical soldering but instead of a temperature controlled station (I use a Hakko FM202) you have to be comfortable with an open flamed torch. The flux is what lets you know when you’ve reached the proper temperature and you don’t want to overheat it. Silver solder has the advantage of being the perfect medium for joining dissimilar metals but all of the sights I’ve worked with have been steel. I looked up the Marble Arms’ bases and they too are steel so I’m not sure what you meant by that? Like painting a car or most anything else, it’s the prep-work that takes more time than the actual process.

The prep work in this job is the fitting process. Most of the “universal” sights don’t have the proper radius but they are usually fairly close. Soldering works by capillary action and the fit-up is what’s important. Here’s what I do: Mic/measure the barrel at the exact spot you want to place the sight. Use this diameter to fabricate a suitable dowel rod that will be used as a platen for the emery cloth/sandpaper. I use whatever is handy e.g. Delrin, aluminum, wood, .etc. After getting my diameter, I then chuck up a suitable piece in my lathe and turn the diameter needed. I then cut a shallow groove so that once I wrap abrasive paper around it I can tuck the edges/ends into the groove. This holds the abrasive in place tightly. If you are doing this by hand you can omit that step but I use my lathe to spin my contraption so I need some way to keep the abrasive in place. You can achieve the same results using a drill press to spin the blank while filing/cutting/grinding it to size. In a pinch, if you were lucky depending on the diameter, you could use a Mechanic’s deep well socket or anything else that closely matched the diameter of your barrel. You then just sand the sight base till it fits against the barrel. Scribe an outline of the base on the barrel and then file/sand the barrel to remove any bluing and get down to bare metal. Make sure you degrease the parts with a suitable solvent. Some people like to “tin” the sight base first and then clamp/solder it to the barrel but I don’t. I just flux the surfaces, clamp and then put the heat to it and solder it like anything else. I use Brownells High Force 44 for soft soldering.


I can see how this might seem daunting to a novice or someone that lacked fabricating skills. It all boils down to if you’re the kind of person that wants something done “right” or cares to take risks with something cobbled up with bailing wire and glue.
 
Low temperature "silver solder" is actually silver-bearing solder that is still soft solder. It's great for joining dissimilar metals or stainless steel-or sights.
It won't work on a pocket clip.
 
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