What material (type of pin) should I use for permanent muzzle brake pin?

[gaijin]

I have always used a portion of the shank of the drill bit I used to drill the hole. Perfect fit.

Role pins are fine too, the weld will flow into it.

I've done the same (simply cut a piece from shank of Drill bit) on a couple builds.

[Campbell]

BCM A2X was what I used. It came with a pin, & was pre-drilled.

BCM makes it easy

[Junkie]

1018 mild steel.

Why make life difficult if you decide later to change muzzle devices . . .

I wouldn't expect that to prevent it from being twisted off if you tried hard enough.

Do you know the material the muzzle brake is made of? I would try to match it as best you could. I'm not familiar with weldability of different SS alloys but if the brake is SS I would look for SS round stock of a suitable diameter. Same thing for carbon and other alloy steels. I believe many commercially available precision dowel pins are are a low alloy, high carbon steel like 1080, 1085, etc. and they would weld ok. You can also find precision ground or cold rolled round stock in similar alloys in the 10XX series. A word of caution though - if you weld onto a high carbon steel there is a possibility some of the carbon will diffuse into the weld puddle and make it very hard to drill later on if you needed to remove it. You could always grind it though.

To be honest it probably doesn't matter all that much. You could even use a piece of a drill bit shank. The only thing I'd want to watch out for is anything ugly happening to your weld puddle because of a funky pin. You don't really need the weld to fuse with the pin either, just cover it up.

Use carbide and you can get it off. Drilling it is going to be difficult at best with a small weld on 4150.

I saw another technique and wondered if it was acceptable:

In this case, the muzzle device had a threaded hole. The gunsmith drilled a hole in the barrel, then ran a screw through the threads and into the hole. When it bottomed out, he torqued the screw until the head broke off. Next, he cut off most of what was sticking out of the hole with a dremel, and finally ground it down and hit I with a wire brush.

It really looked like a weld and the muzzle device was clearly going nowhere. However, no welding was involved.


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I wouldn't trust that to be legal. It doesn't take very long to weld over the top.

[NYH1]

Thanks for the reply's.

What diameter drill bit should I use?

NYH1.

[17K]

A piece of inconel welding rod works just fine.

I did 'em with 1/8".

[Junkie]

I haven't dealt with inconel rod but most welding rods are relatively soft, and I'd rather have the pin hard (so that, if they try to remove it, it doesn't deform and let it move).

I use 3/32 or thereabouts.

[NYH1]

Thanks guys.

NYH1.

[tom12.7]

There's a few good reasons why some would tend to prefer an application that induces minimal heat with the issues associated with that and maintain ATF compliance.

[naverno]

Mithril, no doubt.

[kwg020]

I used an Allen screw. I drilled and tapped the flash hider and drilled an aligning hole into the end of the barrel. I screwed in the Allen screw until it was tight (not farmer tight) and then I filed off the portion where the Allen wrench inserted and made it smooth. I do need to touch it with a welder at some point in the near future but otherwise it can't be removed without drilling it out. I guess everyone has their method.
kwg