At Pachmayr and my shop, The Auto Shop, we never welded rails, only peened. If a customer ever saw how we would pound the crap out of a slide, they would be horrified.
Laughin' here.
Yeah, it takes a lot of pounding to move a hard slide much.............
Back in the day when I was doing work on 1911's, I used a lead mallet for the peening on the slides.
What did you use?.
MM