Filling a Dovetail Sight Notch with a Blank

October 21, 2012 Bill Marr Gunsmithing, Tutorial 0

While you can easily leave an empty dovetail notch alone or buy a pre-made insert, dovetail notches can be permanently filled to provide a high quality look to your build.  It should be noted that the rifle is unloaded and the soldering is completed outside using all appropriate safety precautions.  Since we will be applying Ceracoat to this rifle we decided to solder the blank in place, if you plan on bluing, remember that the silver will not blue and leave a fine silver line.  

For this project we ordered the following items from Brownells:

During this project and others, we utilized the following tools:
After installing ghost ring sights on our 1895 Marlin brush gun, we decided to fill the notch with a blank.  It should be noted that we plan on refinishing the rifle.  Made in the USA from soft steel (to ease in shaping), the Brownells sight dovetail blank is 60 degrees by 3/8′ wide and 12″ long.
Holding the stock in our Multi-Vise, we cut a piece slightly longer then required for our blank.
We prepare all mating surfaces with abrasive paper until they are clean and shiny.  Flux is applied.  We then covered the surrounding areas in heat control paste.
Heating the area with an acetylene torch, Hi-Force solder is applied and allowed to flow into the joint.
Using files and abrasive paper, the blank is blended until it matches the barrel.  This piece is now ready to be refinished

 

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