Weep holes?
 

Did Parkers ever have weep holes on the bottom rib from the factory?

Not that I know of.

Remington did during their time of making and also servicing the Parker gun.

Is it usual procedure when rust bluing to drill weep holes?

A lot of people do it, but it is not necessary. In my opinion, it leads to more issues than anything.

I spoke with Parker a while back at Bachelders about bluing a set of Barrels and he said it is not always necessary to put a weep hole in the barrel but to always mention the fact when discussing the job that if you do not want the weep hole to always make that fact clear ! So I assume it is pretty much standard practice to put the weep hole in a set of refinished barrels ! I decided not to reblue my barrels but the decision was made at that time not to have a weep hole !

Drilling a weep hole is almost never necessary but is an easy shortcut to get the air and impurities out. A good barrel man would seldom if ever need to do it on Parker barrels.





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Lets put it this way... Parker did not do it at Meriden in approx. 60 years of making, finishing and refinishing barrel sets. So... why should it be done today?

Thats a great way of putting it. No need for weep holes at all if you are doing a proper rust blue. I have no idea why anyone would drill a weep hole when rust bluing. If I find one on a barrel I am doing, I plug it using glass bedding compound.

Just my two cents. I spoke to Mr. Dan Morgan about this, a barrel man whom I respect. And I also spoke to a gunsmith whom I greatly admired his work before he retired. Both said essentially the same thing. Then I spoke to Mr. Dale Edmonds.

Mr. Morgan said if a set of barrels, for example Parker, went into the boil and there was not a single sign of air escaping from around the ribs then you were OK. But if he saw any sign of air coming out from the ribs, the barrels required the ribs to be relaid before they would be blued. Parker probably never allowed a set to pass if they showed any sign of voids in the solder.

The second gunsmith told me that he for years did not believe that a weep hole was necessary. But he disassembled a set that had voids in the solder under the ribs and had been rust blued. The damage of the water left in the ribs and between the barrels was severe. Henceforth, he drilled a weep hole to be sure he got all of the water and water displacing oil from the cavity.

Now Mr. Edmonds told me he used a heat gun to get the barrels extremely hot so if there were voids, everything would evaporate, and the water displacing oil would also get rid of the moisture.

That is why I feel much more at ease when I do a Fox, Ithaca, or even a Parker where a weep hole exists, and I can blow air in to remove the now milky water displacing oil, and then I submerge them again in oil, and allow the barrels to drain. Sometimes it takes days for it to all come out.

The question I had about a Parker with no weep hole and a solid soldering job, did they wait until the barrels were finished before drilling and tapping the front sight to avoid an entry point for water. I would think they did.

My opinion is that if there are air bubbles coming from the rib during the boiling phase they need to be relayed. I wouldn't drill a hole in the rib to relieve water that may have gotten under a leaky rib. The right way to do it is to relay the rib. Weep holes on rust blued barrels indicate a potential problem to me. I carefully check these barrels and if it appears that there aren't any problems, I plug the weep hole with glass bedding compound and then boil them to see if the ribs leak.

Between the keels and the amount of solder fill at the muzzle, the drilled hole for a bead almost never goes into open space.

The "almost never" is what makes me think they waited. Why chance it. Maybe on a Parker it would be a rare occurrence, but not other guns. And if every time I had to relay the ribs due to voids, I would never buy another late Fox gun. It is just the way they were.

In fact if you put air into the weep hole, one will be surprised where barrels leak. Yet the ribs are solid for the most part.

So why did Remington start doing it? Maybe their QC was not as good as before the acquisition? Or maybe they had learned something?

Almost every set of fox barrels I have had to refinish have had voids in the solder joints.

Thats interesting. I've only done one set of Fox barrels in my lifetime and that barrel set didn't have gaps. Relatively few Parker barrels that I have worked on have had voids in the solder joints.

If it’s got weep holes, I like to take a syringe and squirt some 190 proof alcohol in there (Everclear), it will help remove the water, then follow up with a good water displacing oil.

190 proof grain alcohol is also a very good solvent for shellac. I like it because it has less impurities than denatured alcohol