Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Ganyana on Rifle Power

You are both right and wrong here. Of course welding is stronger (but can have certain localized issues in some applications due to more extreme heating). And of course soldering and brazing are not the same with solder generally being inferior to brazing strengthwise. Then again, silver brazing is sometimes erroneously called soldering - which it isn't. While I don't claim to know or have tested the strength of silver-brazed materials to the level stated, I do know that mild steel will fail and tear before a good brazed joint will - which puts it in the neighborhood of 50-60,000 perhaps. Or, you can take up your argument with the guys over at American Welding Society; they are the originators, I suppose, of the tests.

IMO silver brazed parts suffer the same erroneous concerns that cast steel parts do (Ruger stuff, Remington [and perhaps Winchester and others'] bolt handles, etc). They can be perfectly good, perhaps even superior, when done properly. Remington does seem to have some problems translating their mass-production techniques into "done properly" as consistently as we might wish. Let's not forget that it should be possible however. Carbide tipped tools of various kinds are frequently silver brazed by mass production - in China and Mexico even- and those tiny joints even tend to hold up to some pretty amazing abuses.