Any busted mainsprings out there?

[ewmail15]

I had such fun restoring my Merrill carbine mainspring with my Lincoln welder that I thought, why not help others? If you have a broken mainspring (or secondary spring as many have), send it my way with return shipping few bucks and I'll make it operable again for you.

Eric in WI 53086

 

[Booner]

Very nice of you to offer this service.

 

[1867crete]

Very nice of you to offer this service.

Yes I agree I wish I had a need for your service! Carry on!

 

[ewmail15]

If anyone has springs, not just mainsprings in need of repair, excluding thin coiled springs, let me give it a shot.

Another thought... If you have springs that were busted but pieces all there, like you bought a bunch of unknowns, send my way rto repair.

 

[Copperhead-mi]

Welding destroys the heat treat of the spring and it will break unless properly re-heat treated. Do you include that in your repair?

 

[ewmail15]

What's the process of re-heat treating the part? I have a small acetylene torch kit with gas and oxygen tanks. I manually opened and closed the spring a bunch of times and she just took it all in stride.

The insides of those broken spring pieces (the exposed areas where I had to weld together) looked worse than pot metal when pot metal breaks. My D setting weld on very slow flux wire feed was so brief of a weld, yet left & right welds went deep and to both sides of the weld spot.

I'm not a welder by trade, but for what I wanted - a fully functional mainspring for half and full hammer cocks, I was a very happy camper.

 

[Copperhead-mi]

What's the process of re-heat treating the part? I have a small acetylene torch kit with gas and oxygen tanks. I manually opened and closed the spring a bunch of times and she just took it all in stride.

The insides of those broken spring pieces (the exposed areas where I had to weld together) looked worse than pot metal when pot metal breaks. My D setting weld on very slow flux wire feed was so brief of a weld, yet left & right welds went deep and to both sides of the weld spot.

I'm not a welder by trade, but for what I wanted - a fully functional mainspring for half and full hammer cocks, I was a very happy camper.

If you are not familiar with heat treating V springs for firearms I wouldn't be doing this stuff for customer's unless you do it for free or at a very minimal charge with the caveat that they take it to a gunsmith for heat treating because the spring IS going to break. Do a google search for youtube how to heat treat shotgun or firearm V springs and there's a number of videos that will show you the basics.

 

[Camp Randall Armory]

Main springs get a lot of abuse. There is a reason why they were forged from a single piece of medium carbon steel. I would not trust a welded spring.

 

[ewmail15]

I'm going to go through a box of Cabela's caps tomorrow. What are the odds the spring holds? Granted, not firing live ammo might not be a real test, but we'll see how she fares.

 

[frankconrad]

IT is not uncommon That if you don,t know better you might get away with it, if you know what you are doing it will fail every time.

 

[ikesdad]

Be very careful when working on someone else's firearm, for fee or free. One assumes a certain amount of liability, even on mainsprings.

 

[gary]

We had to make V springs from spring stock at TSJC. As part of the exit exam some students had to make it. For spring material I salvaged some old leaf springs. You get a lifetime supply. We were taught how to make coil springs too.