Thanks for the reply. I believe my action is a winchester but not sure. all markings were machined off. I did the gasoline trip and didn't detect any cracks. The bolt I believe is remington. I made a plug to fit the hole and remember reading a post that 7018 rods blue well. I sanded the flux off a rod and tried it on a piece of the material I made the plug out of and it worked good. I'm just trying to make sure about the weld before I do something dumb that I could have prevented with a little more patients.