Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Soldered rear sight removal.

I have an old Sako vixen .222 that someone has already knocked the front sight off and I can see the remains of the solder.
I’d like to remove the rear sight that is also soldered on so I can mount a scope at a comfortable height.
The rifle is pretty rough, not a collector by any means and I just want to make it a good shooter truck gun.
Any advice on the best way to remove this rear sight without damaging the barrel would be much appreciated.

Propane torch. I have removed several old sights on military rifles.Solder should melt at about 600 degrees. It was put on the same way. Have some steel wool handy to wipe off left over solder.

I hope it’s that easy, I read some stuff about silver solder requiring a lot more heat??
Thanks for your input.

Most lead/tin solder melts well below 600 degrees F. Tin melts at around 450 but when alloyed with lead the range where it melts is approximately between 350-450 degrees. So, no need to get crazy with the heat. Silver braze requires a lot more heat but silver bearing solders typically melt by 450 F.

We’ll that’s sounding encouraging, anybody ever use an anti scaling compound for this application?

If you Google "What temperatures solder melts" you will get 350-700, but most used are in the 300-400 range. There are solder wicking materials that help remove the solder as it melts.

https://www.pcbdirectory.com/community/what-is-melting-point-of-solder

https://www.digikey.com/en/blog/how-and-when-to-use-solder-wick

So I hit it with the acetylene torch and it started sweating solder almost immediately, knocked it off and wiped clean with steel wool. Worked great. Next question what are my options for blueing the white areas where the sights were?