Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors So what IS "pot metal"?

I just got a Savage 4M .22WRM clip repeater and noticed that, unlike my earlier Model 4S .22, it has a "pot metal" trigger guard. I've had many of the cheaper Savage models over the years with this material for the trigger guard (I prefer the sheet steel of the earlier ones, but "pot metal" beats plastic!). But I've never known just exactly what kind of metal it is. Not ferrous (non-magnetic) but fairly hard; when the paint wears off it is a grayish color like weathered zinc. When it breaks, it shows a silver-colored heavy grain, which quickly weathers to a grayish color.

Anybody know what metal or metals it is made of? Zinc alloy? Alloy of what?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot_metal



Mike

We used to bed rock crushers to their mounting points with molten zink to keep them from vibrating their mounting bolts off. They referred to the molten zink as pot metal.

erich

Seems while Mossberg had a love affair with cheap'az plastic trigger guards, Savage/Stevens romanced the pot metal guards on many of their low end shotguns and combo's - .22's too?. Many are hard to replace and I've tried to solder a Model 24 guard back together with one of those solder-it kits - but with no success.
http://www.caswellplating.com/aids/solderit.htm

If anyone has had luck with one of these kits, pls let me in on the secret. DonW

Edited to add: By the way, the Caswell site has a wealth of info on metal prep, polishing, plating, etc.

Thanks, guys! (I just GNU you guys knew the answers).

I saw one Savage 219B trigger guard that had a large void from the bad casting properties that Wikipedia cites. It was inside the guard and apparently escaped inspection and was just painted over. But in general, I still prefer metal, even pot metal (actually I like the term "monkey metal" Wikipedia refers to!) much better than plastic, even modern plastic. But I have to experiment with paint on some of mine (I did redo the "ebony" forend on my Stevens "gill gun" after getting advice from the board--came out looking like a factory job!). Thanks again!