Question: Browning Citori barrel enlays

[Jim P]

Hey maybe someone can keep me from screwing up a nice shotgun. I am doing some scroll work on a browning citori 12 ga barrels on the reciver end. I would like to do a gold enlay border about .060 wide and I am am concerned about going to deep with the lines and getting in trouble causing the barrel material to be weakend by making my enlay lines as deep as I would like them to be to get a good enough grip on the gold to attach it well enough.
Anybody have any experience with this sorta thing. I'd hate to blind some poor guy or myself by taking a little to deep of a bite in that end of the barrels

 

[FANCYGUN]

What I do with wide barrel band inlays is I make my recess wider than deep. Don't go deep than you feel safe but make the width of the cut how wide you want the gold. About .020 should be deep enough but you be the judge on what you are comfortable with. Sort of a rectangular recess with a flat bottom. I then "tooth" the bottom of the recess in two directions and then hammer in the gold.

 

[Ed Westerly]

I'm with Fancygun on this one. Wide doesn't mean deep. Keep to your same depth, widen the cut as far as you need, and put in lots of teeth. Hammer the wires lightly until you have them all in, and then beat them down tight. Or you could use one wider wire, but larger wires are a bit more difficult to work with (IMHO)

 

[FANCYGUN]

For the wider inlays I take my round wire and tap it sort of flat with my hammer so it is sort of rectangular. I re-anneal it and then pop it in. For lines I like to use one wire and not piece two or more together to get the width. I will piece the gold however if the line width varies.

 

[medicbeedge]

When I cut threads into shotgun barrels the general rule is no more than half the wall thickness. Seeing how you are dealing with a high pressure area, I wouldn't go more than 1/3 of the thickness. If you keep in mind that the chamber area is usually the thickest part of the barrel, you shouldnt have too much of a problem with achieving the correct depth. As fancygun said, do what you feel comfortable with. ~Brian