Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Harden/Temper Mauser 98 cocking piece

A while back I got a large ring Husky 98 from a member here. It had a two position safety (Wisner?) that was very sticky to turn on.

I hit the cocking piece with a few strokes from a diamond file and the safety now goes on and off like butter...

And the cocking piece is now also soft as butter where I dressed it...it immediately started to gouge when I worked the safety.

I have some of the rose mill case hardening compound and was thinking I'd dress out the cocking piece again, bring it up to non-magnetic with a torch, then temper it in the oven.

Was sort of wondering what temperature to temper it at? 350? 400? 450? For 3 hours?

If this doesn't work I'll find another cocking piece but would like to give this a shot.

I use Kasenit powder and follow the directions on the can. The cocking piece gets as hard as woodpecker lips.

Temper afterward, yah? Or?

I've never tried a carburizing paste or powder, but have made a few gun parts from scratch from 4140...
I take it to just past non magnetic, then quench in oil. Afterwards I give it two cycles of 400F for an hour, letting it cool to room temp in between.

Here's an ejector for an over/under shotgun that I had to build from scratch.

That'dl probably be enough for this cocking piece but I have the powder, so might as well use it. Thanks!

Nice work on the ejector.

Old thread but...finally used that Cherry Red powder to harden a pair of 98 cocking pieces which had been filed to fit aftermarket safeties. Not sure it's as good as Kasenit, but it worked pretty well. On the first one I did four coats, heating and dipping it and removing it quickly like the instructions said.

On the second one I left the cocking piece buried in the Cherry red for about half an hour after each time I heated it. That built a 5x thicker shell of material, which required longer heating time to burn off, and seemed to have resulted in a deeper case per coat.

A Grobet file *mostly* slid across the first cocking piece after one coat, then slid right off after the subsequent coats. On the second cocking piece (which soaked in the powder longer) I couldn't get the file to bite at all after one coat, but still did two more.