doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DIY Gunsmithing @ doublegunshop.com Care and cleaning of case colors

All did. Not just US-Americans. Zapon lacquer, back then.

Carcano

I've asked this question with no results. Has anyone experienced a blacking of case coloring. I had my Smith Trap Grade 10ga. cased. I set it aside and all was fine for a couple of years then it turned black. The coloring is there but it is very muted by the black color. I feel like all it needs is a good cleaning and that will wash away the black? I have removed the protective lacquer in the belief it was the protective coat, it seems to have helped a little but its dark!!

One point is that what is today still is commonly called "zapon lacquer" and marketed as such, has frequently become an acrylate lacquer or varnish. Both may react differently.

Secondly, original old zapon lacquer is prone to yellowing and crackling under the direct influence of UV light, over the decades.

Thirdly, the "case colours" are actually very thin oxide layers, with a thickness of only a few nanometres. The thickness also determines the color (!). Hence, they are rather sensitive to any kind of mechanical influence or wear. The layer thickness of the zapon lacquer cover over them is probably thousandfold.

I don't believe Parker coated their color case hardened frames & parts with anything.
Neither did AH Fox at least when they used Bone/Wood charcoal process on the earlier guns.
The cyanide colored guns , maybe something was put on them.

AH Fox didn't do the cyanide hardening in house. They had (Fred) Heinzelman (sp?) in Carlstadt, NJ do that work for them.
They are still in biz AFAIK. They were a couple of yrs ago at least and would still take in polished firearms parts for the Cyanide CAse Color work.
They had (still have?) an FFL so sending the frame was no problem. Cost was cheap as I recall.
That's where Turnbull sent his Fox work and any other that needed cyanide coloring back when.
Don't know what they do know.

Most everything got 'coated' with a protective something there. All the SxS's that I remember except the Parkers.
Orange shellac was a fav.

Yes the color layer is incredibly thin on the surface.
Depending on how the re-coloring was done, the colors would sometimes start to wear off the high edges
just during reassembly. Especially if you had to take-apart & reassemble a couple times to get that GD SST to work right.

Just some idle thoughts this AM along w/a cup of coffee

That coincides with my assumptions about protective coatings being used at the factories, Kutter. Thanks.

May I ask, what is YOUR opinion on whether or not direct sunlight can eventually cause case-colors to fade away? After I realized through the excellent articles and electron microscope images of the surfaces, in Dr. Oscar Gaddy's articles, that the colors themselves are a by-product of a prismatic effect due the the "crystalline structure" of the case hardened surface, I came to the conclusion that only sunlight (in the absence of handling, such as in a museum setting) alone couldn't alter the surface structure of the steel which causes the colors. I can easily see, however, how handling can wear away the super thin layer and alter it.

I have a simple way of seeing it and am open to other informed ideas about how sunlight could do this.

I've always had my doubts about this also, and for the reason you gave. I don't think sunlight alone could wear down a crystalline structure.

I really would like to hear Jim's opinions on this. I greatly respect his opinions and experience.

Does anyone know if cyanide case colors have the same crystalline structure as charcoal case colors?

I would suppose (rather than merely hope) that Jörg Schilling's doctoral dissertation (Dr.-Ing.) also had covered and examined exactly this very subject.

Carcano

My personal opinion is that sunlight alone doesn't fade casecolors.
Handling the piece, even the slightest wear will do it. Though some pieces are prone to wear much easier from handling than others.
Just the way the individual guns were done.

I have read some reports about sunlight fading case colors on guns in display racks for long periods and not moved around. One side faded where the sun could reach it, The other side not.
I really don't know,,just my opinion.

Getting the colors to appear is not really that difficult. But there are so many variables in the works when that happens, that any number of them can be slightly changed & Colors will still appear. But then you can get what we called 'soft colors',,those that wore off very easily . Or with changes in the variables, colors that withstand the handling and wear better and don't disappear on you in a season of light use.

Some mfg'rs colors just seem to withstand time and handling better than others. Just the particular way they did theirs I guess.
Maybe the steel alloy is involved as well. Again there are dozens of variables that can be 'adjusted' and still get colors. What else is changed when the adjustments are done could be one involving how permanent they are.

Colors can be had with no surface hardening, that's another variable to the whole thing. These seem to wear easier as well.

Cyanide colors always seemed much more resilient to wear than charcoal process colors.
We never did any cyanide work (in spite of what the NYSDEC thought when they came knocking, but that's another story).
But plenty of guns came in with the cyanide hardening and colors on them to be re-done to wood/bone charcoal colors.

Cyanide hardened/colored parts seemed more difficult to anneal.
The technique used was caveman, maybe that had something to do with it !!
But it worked fine for annealing guns that were orig bone/wood charcoal colored.
Cyanide colored parts sometimes had to go through the 'process' a couple times to be assured of a soft surface before I could do any re-cutting on them.