Tim, just for the record it is legal to reweld a garand receiver back together, an M14 receiver on the over hand is a different story.
Getting back to TIG welding the Garand.
One positive thing I can say, is at least you purchased a good machine.
Everthing I'm gonna say from now on may come across as pretty negative - sorry about that.
Ok, if you've just brought a TIG, and never used one before you are one hell of a long way from welding a receiver back together. First thing you're gonna want to do is learn how to tig weld. If anything, TIG is more like oxy welding. I'd suggest doing a course at your local community college and going to a local steel mechant and getting as many off cuts of sheet and plate steel as you can carry to practice.
As for the actual welding - without giving away too many trade secrets.
1. You need to build a jig. This will hold the pieces in place whilst welding. It will need to be made as such to compensate for shrinkage after welding. You'll need to use a set of Garand blueprints to make this or use an original to copy.
2. Your receiver is going to need to be a saw cut one, or if it was Demilled correctly (cut with oxy) your going to need to get a few and mix and match until you have an overlapping set - then saw cut them.
3. After welding you'll need to manuflux or similar to check for cracks. If needed reweld.
4. Grinf the welds down and do any other required machining.
5. Stress relieve and then reharden. I wouldn't attemt doing this yourself, most folks would out source this to hardening professionals. This is where the original blueprints come in handy as they will usually have the hardening details on them.
6. Test fire.
Sounds a lot harder than you first figured right? There's not a lot of folks out there who can reweld receivers and do it well. A Garand is a poor choice for a beginner. My suggestion is to go to some gunshows and see if you can get some Delmilled colt 1911's and practice on them first. When you move into MG's I'd start off with something where the receiver is not a high stressed part. In a Garand/M14 heat treating etc is critical and the receiver takes all the stress. If it fails you're gonna get hurt.
Any other questions feel free to shoot me an email.
[This message has been edited by AAA (edited 12-22-2002).]