Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Case Colors by 6mm250

I did a lever with bone & charcoal ;









Doesn't look like Savage did it , I wonder what they used ? cyanide ? or ?


Mike

It looks superb. Very nice job. Id love to hear about how you did it.

I think for a first time recipe your on the right track. Looks great and you certainly are to be congratulated for trying it. Don't give up. Tom

A mix of bone charcoal & wood charcoal , put it in a retort at 1500 degrees for 1 hour , then dump it in a barrel of water that has air bubbling through it. I still need to put it in the oven at 350 for an hour to draw it back.


Mike

Nice work 6mm. Impressive.
I know you did your homework...but i thought i read that they quenched them in oil?

I was pretty sure it involved cyanide, plus oil dipping. One of those things I read in an old article somewhere and 25% remember..

They may very well quench in oil depending on the process used , I don't know. You just created more homework for me Jed.


Mike

I think there are more than a couple of cyanide processes , dangerous stuff that & probably hard to acquire.....unless , does anyone know where I could get a truckload of peach pits ??


Mike

cyanide process was not used until the 30s... its very clear which is which... cyanide is wavey is a regular pattern... bone and charcoal is completely random... I'll see if I can find pictures.

this is cyanide: colors have more purple, less bright blue and straw



bone and charcoal case:

cyanide on a lever...not the best pics but you get the idea.





early lever with bone and charcoal case

Thanks Drew, I learned something new tonight. Great photos.

Mike

Mike,

You shoulda turned it over a few more times! Just kidding.

I will be down your way in mid Decemeber so maybe we can hook up a hunt again. This time I wont miss. But dont knock over my gun again!!

I am supposed to meet up with Bruce for a hunt as well.

Your friend...
Jeff

good pics and info

GORGEOUS work!!!!!

I recall reading quite some time ago, perhaps in a story about a young fella named Turnbull, that one of the difficulties in casehardening, especially receivers, is preventing warpage. Any comments/concerns on this aspect?

That lever is beautiful. Just beautiful.

in all my posting I seemed to have forgotten to tip my cap to Mike... that lever really did come out nice!! No small feat to take on the case color process. Be interested to hear if you jigged it and if so, how...

Just gorgeous Mike! (Any warpage?) What do you plan to coat it with to preserve the colors? Lacquer or ?

To achieve maximum case thickness after the quench, I understand that you need to quench in water, quickly, like Mike did. Oil quenching won't do, not quick chill enough. Oil quenching is reserved for through-hardening alloy steels, with a draw/tempering cycle conducted afterward to bring it back from a glass hard state to a usable hardness. No need to draw/temper a case hardened piece after the quench, in fact it would be somewhat counter-productive.

Remember, all case hardening (carburizing) was/is done to impart a thin skin (case) of glass hardness to the outside surface leaving the inside dead soft, to improve the wear/durability qualities of otherwise cheap low carbon steel. The process infuses extra carbon into the surface via "cooking" it with a carbon diffusing material packed tightly around it (such as various charcoal). The colors we all love on classic guns is strictly a by-product of that process and contribute nothing to the physical qualities of it. Everybody back then (and now) had their own "secret" blend of various charcoals that gave their products a distinctive look.

Warpage of parts in the process is a very real concern.

I did not take any precautions against warpage on that piece , I figured if it did warp I could always "adjust" it. It does not appear to have suffered any ill effects as far as warping , the proof of course will be when I put it back in the rifle.

A 99 receiver with it's relatively thin flat sides would require some sort of jig , no doubt. Seems I read somewhere that Turnbull will not do 99 receivers.

The next lever that I do , I'm going to wrap with wire to see how it affects the pattern of the colors.


Mike

BTW , I thought about spraying it with clear lacquer but then decided to just wipe it down with linseed oil , kinda old school that.



Mike

galazan makes a case color lacquer have no idea what the difference is but thought I would let you know...

Mike,

thanks for that, I have some older gun-smithing books, that start out with " go to the chemists shop, and procure 5# of sodium cyanide, etc"

Pretty cool job, would love to see pictures after it is oiled up and re-installed.

Sycamore

Mike....you are correctomundo...I inquired with Turnbull and they will NOT touch a 99 reciever.

Boy, I've got a ton of respect (silent pause) and lots of envy for a guy that can do that. I'm getting old and scared in spirit! Nice, nice, nice job! Will you be offering courses any time soon?

I let this go too long & in the interest of full disclosure I must say that I did not jump into this unaided. I have accomplices. The local community college started a gunsmithing program about 2 1/2 years ago , I have been going there for about 2 years.

As to the color case hardening , no one at the school including the instructer had ever done any until about a month ago. I waited until we got the process figured out before I threw that Savage lever in there!


Mike

Don't be skeered !

I'm not so old & certainly not scared but I do get tired easy.


Mike

Seems like there are some things I just don't want to attempt anymore. Don't want to hand build another SxS shotgun stock either! Wowser! Maybe if I had a nice well lit shop to work in. My unlit Quonset hut that leaks doesn't inspire me to greatness. Anymore, I measure my accomplishments with a ruler, not a range finder. Anyway, I love what you did there on the lever.

I can vouch for one thing - the older you get, the more critical, "well lit" becomes.

'WELL LIT' as in electricity or magnifing

"WELL LIT" can clearly mean many things to many people...when I was still
hitting it hard, "Well Lit" meant the same as "well oiled"...and a few other terms...
Now, for me, it means just what it implies..."well lit" my days of getting "well oiled"
are, alas, in the rear view for me! No off switch in my case for the "electricity" to ever be turned off!

Found some old information/recipes from Refinishing forum.Case Hardening

The following is a composite of two excellent posts on case hardening by subscribers Bruce Conner and Ward French.

It can be found at: http://members.aol.com/illinewek/faqs/case.htm

For readers wishing to pursue colour case hardening further, I strongly recommend a series of two articles by Mr. Oscar Gaddy on the subject, found in the winter 1996 and spring 1997 issues of the Double Gun Journal.

Bruce begins:

Case hardening involves putting carbon (or a combination of carbon and nitrogen) into the surface of the steel to make it a high-carbon steel which can be hardened by heat treatment, just as if it were tool steel or any other high carbon steel. Only the outer skin gets hard this way, the center is still tough and malleable. This makes for a strong part with a tough surface.

Ward continues:

Low carbon steel, i.e. steel with about 20 points or less of carbon, cannot be made to harden by heating and quenching, as higher carbon steels can. Low carbon steels are tough, soft and flexible. They wear quickly and batter easily.

Many parts, including gun actions in days gone by, were made with low carbon steel. It was cheap, strong and easy to machine. Unfortunately it would not stand up to the battering of use in the field. Case hardening added carbon to the surface skin of the steel part and left it in a state which could be hardened by quenching.

To case harden a part (the process is also known as pack hardening) the finished low carbon steel part is placed in a sealed container, packed with a high carbon compound. In the old days this was simply animal hide or bone. The container filled with parts and carbon bearing material was brought to a red heat and held at that temperature for a time determined by the size of the part. The time might be from a half hour up to several hours. As the bone or hide became carbon in the container, and a carbon rich gas formed, some of the carbon would infuse into the surface of the steel. Over time this would penetrate several thousandths of an inch, producing a high carbon surface on the low carbon steel part.

At the proper time the container is removed from the furnace and the contents dumped into a quenching bath, usually water with perhaps a surface coat of oil to lessen the shock of the quench. The high carbon surface skin becomes glass hard, but the low carbon body of the piece remains soft and very ductile and able to resist shock. Properly done it made a simple and very durable system for treating metal action parts.

Colors are produced when the steel surface is cooled unevenly, capturing the natural blues, oranges and yellows of cooling steel. Several methods are employed to do this. Stevens moved the parts into the quench in a jerky fashion, producing a barred effect of color. Perazzi did the same. In the London trade the quench bath, usually a barrel with soft water and a skim of oil, was agitated by stirring, or with bubbles of air, producing a mottled effect on the steel.

Bruce adds:

Color case hardening is done much the same way except that generally only leather and bone are used as the carbon source. I don't know why this works better than charcoal, but it does. You get more brilliant colors with them. The other thing you do is modify the quenching bath. You need a source of bubbles. LOTS of bubbles to really rile up the quench bath. Adding a bit of potassium nitrate to the water increases the brilliance of the colors as well, but isn't a requirement. You have to watch the temperature more closely with color case hardening or the colors won't come out well. Don't go over 1350 F.

Kasenit and similar compounds are a lot easier to use and you can just use a torch. You heat the part up red, dunk it into the Kasenit compound and get a good coating of it sticking to the steel in the places you want hardened. Then reheat it up to a good red and quench it in water. This can be repeated to increase the depth of the case hardening. It works very well and is quite fast, but leaves a kind of dull grey color to the surface. For parts that are internal it works great and if you make the hardening deep enough, you can polish the metal and still have a hard surface.

Ward continues:

The colors have nothing to do with the effectiveness of the case hardening. Many, if not most, parts are hardened without colors. The surface takes on a dull gray look. The London makers usually polish this surface bright. It is glass hard, but without the decorative affect of the colors.

Anyone who has a case colored part should be aware that colors will fade on exposure to direct sunlight over an extended time period. Parts must be protected. Clear fingernail polish or a similar lacquer will protect the surface and a gun case or cabinet will do the rest. Case hardening was widely used on all lock parts except springs, and the process could be carried out even on the frontier with a minimum of equipment and knowledge.

Good shooting,

Ward and Bruce

Walter Taber
- Houston, Texas


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September 3, 2008
The leather and bone composition is correct. I have tried this myself to case harden frizzens for flintlock pistols and rifles. It produced a hardness sufficient to resist a file. I tried several lengths of exposure to heat and got results from just the surface hardened to hardening to a depth where the part shattered when dropped like it was glass. There are many old world recipes using various components (sea salt, chamber lye (urine), calcium, etc.) but all of them included leather or bone or a combination of both (animal carbons). Hardening was usually "in the white" leaving a grayish or white metallic, frosty, look. I found an old English recipe "MOXON's Method" that I use to this day. It uses a tin with lid in which you fill with powdered bone, leather dust, charcoal powder and a small amount of calcium carbonate. The ratios can be adjusted for different effects but typically 3 of bone, two of leather, 1 of charcoal and one half carbonate. You place the item to be hardened into the mixture, add a little vinegar (it will eubilesse). Let finish and stand so the mixture completely covers the part when done bubbling. Drill a small hole in the lid so you can observe the color of the mass. Cover & Heat until mass is blood red, hold for half an hour after reaching temp. Quickly remove lid and quench part in cool water with tongs, keeping it moving. For color, try an oil and water mix (make sure it is well agitated so the oil is in thorough suspension) instead of just cool water. This causes uneven cooling and renders different surface appearances. Remember, this can be dangerous and should be done outside where spills, splashes cannot damage or harm. Always wear a full face shield [linked by editor to product info at Amazon], insulated protective gloves [linked by editor to product info at Amazon] and apron [linked by editor to product info at Amazon]. Have a charged hose ready to wet you down if hot fluid splashes on you. Have fun, experiment but survive to enjoy it!

Mike Zacharko
- Wentzville, Missouri


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May 29, 2009
I am an artist/hobbyist and hold a PHD and TRI, I have been making guns for many years.Recently I have been wanting to try Colorcase Hardening Receivers. My question for all you veterans out there is... what do you use for packing the parts?

Earl Niganobe
Gun Maker..Designer - Blind River, Ontario, Canada


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January 19, 2011
I use plain ole "bone meal" from the garden section. It imparts the carbon to the metal but I have not tried the CCH. The hole in the tin will let you know when the bone meal has been burnt up as the steam will stop coming out. The meal will be black when it is opened.
Good luck.....

barney barnitz

Looks great Mike, you have a price list yet??

How many you want kenster ? , maybe I can give you a quantity discount.



Mike

might have to try this on a butt plate.