"Bogus Colors
Forum: The gunshop.com Double Gun BBS
Date: Fri, 21 Nov 1997 14:51:34 GMT
From: Oscar Gaddy <unknown>
I have done some experimenting with this sort of thing and I believe that I have the answer to your question. Very simply, you can obtain the colors associated with color casehardening without the the surface carburization and hardening or bulk hardening by heating parts to a much lower temperature (below the critical temperature) than normally used for this process.
For example, heating steel parts in a pack mixture of bone and wood charcoal to 400 to 600 degrees C. provides very little if any carburization, however quenching the parts along with the bone and wood charcoal pack at this temperature, if done correctly, can produce colors that are essentially identical to true casehardening colors. I believe that the mechanism for production of the colors is identical to the one describe in my recent article on color casehardening in the DGJ. The liimitation of this technique is that the tempering temperature of the alloy steel that is colored must be greater than the maximum temperature used for the coloring process otherwise the part will have toughness degraded..
I found the saved post from Oscar.
Btw Jerry Kuhnhausen and R.A Walsh definately both work on the RC scale, if it's good enough for them to use as reference it's good enough for me.
