Parker reproduction woe
 

A hunting buddy of mine has a Parker reproduction 12 gauge whose underlug has completely come loose and is now a separate piece. I have not seen it but he says it appears to have been glued in and not brazed or soldered! Anyway, it is out and needs a proper repair. Any ideas?

Kirk Merrington, Kerrville, TX
https://www.merringtonfineguns.com/

You might want to give Briley a call.

Is Kirk still working? I had heard he retired.

He did and I'm not sure he is still alive for I know he was sick for a while.

I would contact Mr. Skeuse.

Brian Dudley if spelled correctly....(-:

I thought so too but I contacted him and he's still working.

The main barrel locking lug? Or the forend lug?

Brian, it is the main lug. Ouch!

https://www.jpgbox.com/jpg/75681_1024x768.jpg

https://www.jpgbox.com/jpg/75682_800x600.jpg

This is only the second time I have ever hears of this happening to a repro. Or any other double for that matter. They SHOULD be hard brazed and should be quite a feat to have one come loose.

That is the only time I have seen a photo of a pulled lug.
It looks like from the photo that it is just soft soldered. So it should be able to be re-soldered in place.

This is a first I've seen on a repro.

I agree with Bryan that it looks like it was soldered & should be able to be repaired fairly easily by just about any gunsmith that knows how to solder ribs.

Art's gun shop in Missouri might be another place to contact.

That’s the main barrel lug. Wow.

I am biased towards Philip Crenwelge in Quitman, TX. The great smith's are out there, but they are getting harder and harder to find.

Since no one has ever seen this, I suspect that a grand total of effectively zero good gunsmiths have any experience with this. My first thought too was that any number of good welders or machinists could solder this successfully. It might be a lot easier to find a good machine shop locally than a good gunsmith. It looks like, after cleanup, the locating pin should make it easy to return it to alignment. A gunsmith that is good at soldering would be the best choice, but I would trust any competent machine shop if they protect the blueing with heat paste.

Give Dan Cullity in Sandwich mass a call. He can fix it I'm sure

The lug should have been high temperature silver soldered or brazed. A low temperature solder like most gunsmiths use on ribs wouldn’t be strong enough to hold a lug down. Reattaching the lug properly is not for the faint of heart. The high heat required for silver soldering can make clean up difficult and the location of the lug has to be perfect.

Well said with good points made.

Out of curiosity. Do you have the talents to do a job like this? Do you still do SxS gunsmithing?

At this time I would decline tackling this repair. By the time it’s soldered back down, polished, and re-blued it might be cheaper to buy a set of repro barrels that’s floating around for sale and have it fitted and renumbered to match the gun.

We just bought a laser welder for the shop and are in the process of getting it setup. I expect to use it more for filling in pitting and welding barrel hooks, but it might be useful to weld the seams on something like this for added insurance.

The owner of this barrel should take the lug and heat it up with a torch and see if the solder easily melts. If it does, then it is just soft solder.

Exactly, would be interesting to know if it’s low temp solder

I have a suspicion that it is. This is the second time in the last year I have hears of this happening. And by the look of it, it appears like soft solder.

I agree that it SHOULD be brazed. But that may not be how they made them.

If it were brazed as a repair, would the solder in the ribs come loose?

Yes bill. Unless a method were used to localize the high temp needed to braze it. Such as induction.

The heat required to solder the lug back in is going to be both a temp, and duration, that the ribs loosening is quite likely.
This isn't a simple fix, but a complete rebuild, and undertaken by anyone thinking it's a simple job is probably going to junk the barrels.

That's where the glue comes in.

It looks like they got the joint too hot & burnt the flux causing a weak joint. More that likely the repoductions were all soft soldered. And the reason we haven't seen more failures is most are shot very little, if at all. I've had 9 repo's over the years & most only had a few boxes shot through them, & then into the safe they go & a few were never shot at all. Most that come up for sale look like they have never been shot. So, this is probably why we haven't seen many failures.

Winchester 21 barrels are fully soft soldered. Making any work on them a nightmare. And they are supposed to such a great shotgun…

Hmmmm--I took a 20ga repro on an Argentina dove hunt and put over 10,000 rounds through it on that trip. The shooting was fast & furious getting the barrels as hot as they could possibly get from shooting which included opening & closing the action as fast as the bird boy could drop two new rounds in it and never had an issue whatsoever with the gun, let alone the lug coming loose.

I'm more of the thought that this failure is a standalone issue with this particular set of barrels and we shouldn't denigrate all repro's based on this one failure.

Actually this is the second failure of a Repro Parker for my hunting buddy. He reminded me several years ago a 28 did the same thing. He says Merrington did the repair with a total breakdown and started from scratch. Nice to know Kirk is back in business. He will contact him.

And no, these guns aren't closet queens.

Model 21's are great shotguns! They're just a horse of a different color which IMO shouldn't be compared in this instance when the barrel lug mechanical attachments are so different from each other.

The better comparison in my mind is comparing repro's to original Parkers. Original Parker barrel lugs were brazed, why didn't the contracted Winchester factory in Japan use the same method? If they had done so, we might not be having this conversation about a lug coming loose on this set of repro barrels.

I am afraid Kirk is not in business any longer.

I stopped by Phillips Gunsmithing today in regards to a bit of work he is doing for me. I told him about the Parker in this thread. He told me that he could do the repair. No problem. That was pretty much the conversation.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll pass it on.

After having Phillip do work for me on several occasions I have no doubt that he can.

Who ever you find that's willing to take on the project, more than likely will soft soldered it. To do it proper, the barrels needs to be stripped & the lugs brazed or silver soldered & then the top & bottom ribs can be soft soldered back on. The Parker "lump breach block" is probably the weakest of the various lug types unless it's brased or silver soldered like the original Parkers. Other types of barrel lugs have a different design ( chopper lump, demi-block dovetail, mono block) & can be soft soldered and are very strong because of the different lock up design.

Before I hand the barrel to a gunsmith, I would find out how he plans to fix it. Braze or silver solder, or soft soldered.

Also, if you look at the solder joint you can see the black spots, indicating they got the joint too hot & burnt the flux leaving a weak solder joint.

This forum thread has me a little concerned about the longevity of Parker repro main barrel locking lug. Do we know for sure all were soft soldered? If so why when the original was brazed.