Anyone know how to weld stainless steel?

[CathyInBlue]

A little background.

I own a Taurus PT-945. A long time ago, I managed to lose one of the frame bushings and its attendant screw. That rendered one of the grips incapable of remaining in place properly, and I had to shelve the gun.

Over the years, I've occasionally gone into local gun shops to ask them to simply order me a complete set of grip screws and frame bushings from Taurus. For reasons unbeknown to me, they were always incapable of this seemingly simple feat. I've also done occasional Internet searches for same, always to no avail.

Finally, I noticed an item listing on Brownell's World's Largest Supplier of Gun Parts, Gunsmith Tools & Shooting Accessories - Brownells for a set of frame bushings, grip screws, and the thread tap for the bushings for a generic 1911 for an unbelievably low price. I jumped at it. I figured if Taurus parts are made of unobtainium, screw it, I'll convert to use more common parts.

I was practicly giddy as a schoolgi-- I was very happy that I was finally going to be able to carry my .45ACP again. I honed down some of the rough spots it's collected over the years. I've got a bottle of Brasso metal polish to bring a shine back to the parts I honed. All was beer and pizza until the package from Brownell's arrived.

It was just the frame bushings. No screws. No tap. These were unusable to me. I wrote to Brownell's and they are doing the upstanding thing and sending the remaining parts without charge even though the screws and tap were pictured and described on the item page, they were not supposed to be in the sale item. Kudos to Brownell's. Rest assured, I'll be buying from them many times in the future.

Okay, so while I'm waiting for the grip screws and the tap so I can convert my Taurus PT-945 frame and grips to play nice with each other through 1911 frame bushings and grip screws, I started eyeballing the existing threaded holes I will have to tap out.

Now, I know my 945 is supposed to require a special upper-left bushing for securing the flex spring which manages the thumb-safety lever and keeps the lever firmly in the safe position when the lever is engaged, but I'm confident that with the slightly larger frame bushings in place, at most I'll need to fabricate a small, thin washer to cover enough of the flex spring to insure that it's secured. That's not my problem at this point, but my problem is with the upper-left frame bushing.

Specificly, with its threaded hole. While the other three frame bushing locations have plenty of metal around them to be tapped out for the 1911 frame bushings, the design of my 945 is such that there is very little metal around this upper-left frame bushing. Apparently, it was milled away to make room for another milling tool to cut the pocket for the sear tension spring. Not that I begrudge my sear its tensioner. No, no. But, this has left the upper-left bushing's threaded hole week and prone to breaking.

And this is what it has done. Not entirely. It's not like I'm missing metal at this point, but upon examining my frame for the tapping process, a clear crack can be seen through the thinnest part of the metal surrounding the frame bushing hole. The crack may actually just be the point where one milling tool's path intersects another milling tool's path, but that's not really the point. The point is the metal around my upper-left frame bushing is intolerably thin and I need to add some metal in if I'm to complete, or indeed even start, this modification.

What is the best method for adding up to 1 cm^2 of 2.25 mm thick stainless steel?

I don't know what the grade of stainless steel it is, and it looks like it may have some kind of coating on it. Zinc phosphate? Not sure if the Brasso polishing job will necessarily bring the honed parts of the frame back to full luster.

I have a 110VAC home welder that uses flux-core welding wire. I have steel and aluminum welding wire. I'm sure I can find a stainless steel welding wire for a Lincoln welder without too much difficulty, but for someone with zero experience welding stainless, is it advisable to make this my trial by (electric arc) fire?

I know Taurus has a lifetime warrantee, but I feel like I've had a hard enough time dealing with this issue as is. I don't really feel the need to pay to ship my frame (not going to reassemble it and add weight to the shipping charges just to have them work on one part) to [STRIKE]Brasilia[/STRIKE] Miami just to have them shoot back that there's nothing wrong with the frame bushing hole, state they don't assist in modifying their weapons to use parts from other maker's guns, and yet refuse to provide the missing bushing and screw, because, as the warrantee states, it does not cover grips.

Any advice as to where I should go from here?

I really shoulda held out for the Sig Sauer P-220.

At this point, even selling the PT-945 as is and buying an SA XD-45 sounds like a surer way to get me carrying a .45ACP again.

P.S. Anyone know if red fingernail polish is a good solution to adding the missing red paint back into a slide divet for the safety-off indicator? The red dot is still visible on the right side of the slide, but the paint has long since popped out of the milled depression for it on the left side.

[jayroy]

I just traded in to a PT 945 it is a good shooter. If you strike out on repairs I will take the Mag. Can never have to many mags.

[localgirl]

Cathy:

I'm forwarding your post to a friend who welds steel for a living. Can't guarantee he'll respond, but we'll see.

[CathyInBlue]

jayroy: Does the Taurus website disavow all knowledge of your 945's serial number in its model lookup page as well?

I have three 945 mags myself. Really wanting to get back to using them.

[phrogmedic]

why not call the manufacturer and talk to them. they probably have the parts on the shelf or you could send it to them for a repair. Do you really want to trust a firearm that you "rigged" together ?? just my .02

[CathyInBlue]

I haven't "rigged" anything. That's my point. It seems the manufacturer makes it so hard to get parts that I can't even begin to rig it. And since when is a repair of what I consider a manufacturing defect (too little metal around the upper-left frame bushing) considered "rigging"? I could reassemble my 945 from its constituent parts and it would work just fine. Except that it would still be missing a frame bushing and grip screw and so I would be firing it with only one grip on the gun, which is dangerous.

Did you even read my post, or did you TL;DR it?

[alduane]

Usually you would weld Stainless Steel with a TIG welder. It's a difficult metal to weld.

[dbaierl]

Do not try to MIG weld on your gun. I know the welder your speeking of. It's not up to the task. Tig welding would be the proper welding to do. Not to be done by a novice. I would exhaust all other avenues before trying to build up material thickness welding. Then it will require finish work that would be best done by a gunsmith or machinist familiar with assembly of your pistol.
I tig weld stainless/aluminum at work. It takes a practiced hand.

[wizard]

I very strongly recommend that you find a gunsmith that can TIG weld that for you. As stated previously, Stainless is a tricky metal to weld if not experienced. What you envision is not out of the question, just takes some TLC. It may be cheaper to maybe find a Parts gun to get the parts. Check with Numerich, they offer all kinds of gun parts that are obsolete, or even try jack first gun parts. good luck. PM me if you need more info or cant get in contact with either place.

[drewoufan]

Im a welder and if you need that done take it to a precision machine shop. Not only does it need tig welded but needs to be done with a high frequency wet rig to keep the heat down. A wire welder or regular rig would make a mess of the whole thing. It has to be tiny welds only obtained by high frequency rig.