doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Who is doing quality color case hardening?

PA24, that is really nice work! Really nice!

Another place doing case coloring is Wyoming Armory in Cody, WY. The WA is comprised of a bunch of folks that did not go with Ballard Rifles to Michigan. I believe Keith Kilbey is their case color expert.

Brent

The shop in CT that I was pleased with was Clark Gunsmithing And Restorations, LLC of 221 East Haddam Colchester Tpke, East Haddam, CT 06423, tel. 860-873-9639. In 2008, they did the top two Ithaca NIDs. The bottom 410 has likely the original case color.

Thank you Brent.....

I try to stay away from the "orangie" look and keep it as original as possible......labor of love I guess..??????

Best Regards,

Chris, Years ago I started asking pertinate questions of those doing CCH for my clients. They in general all said they kept their furnaces at 1300 to 1250 degrees. My source of CCH uses 1300 degrees for his color hardening. I send approx. 50-60 guns a year to him for this service , being doing so for the past 8 years --- no problems with metal moving, cracked frames or any unhappy clients. That's lots of guns with no problems. FWIW

Ken's experience is not to be taken lightly. When I go to file and prep my own action, I'll follow his lead,

If you disassemble and do your own polishing, most shops will do do the CCH for <$300. Some won't have it any other way. When you find one that will receive your entire gun as is and return it with new CCH, you'll likely be paying many hundreds.

My last one was done a year ago (disassembled, polished, CCH'd, reassembled) by Giacomo Sporting in Lee Center, NY for <$400.

I teach a manufacturing process class at the University of North Dakota and I have all of my students (28 this semester) do bone and charcoal color casehardening on the baseplates for the steam engines we build. I've found during my own experiments (and that of students) that it is quite easy to get decent colors; however, we don't do gunwork at the university. Our recipe is 50/50 mix of wood to bone charcoal (purchased at Brownells) and a soak at 1350-1400 degrees for two hours in an electric furnace. I use an old 55 gallon drum for a quench tank that has been rigged up with a thermometer, airline, and a drain. We have a sheet steel lid with a hole cut out of the center. The quench process involves sliding the crucible over the hole and the air exposure is almost nil, which seems to improve the odds of getting good colors significantly. I've got really good colors at temps lower than 1300 degrees, in some cases better than I get at the higher ranges, just not as hard a surface. We always draw our parts in a 400 degree oven for 1-2 hours following the quench which I think improves the color somewhat, but it also would be a good way of preventing some sections from being to brittle.

My experiences have been the higher 1600+ temperatures don't yield great colors, Dr. Gaddy suggested many of the original makers probably stayed in the lower temp ranges. The poster that commented that this process is unsafe for firearms receivers is contradicted by millions of existing shotguns that were subjected to the same process. I'm not in the business of doing this process except in an educational sense and the only reason that I mention it is that if students with little or no prior experience can pull this process off, so can you. All it takes is a bit of equipment and a lot of experimentation, plus, it is a great deal of fun.

PA24 - Great job!
Ken - I'll give you a call.
Thanks to all for the responces, I will pass them all along.
Alex - I just wish I had the time to do all this, the students in your class are lucky to learn this and understand the process.
Chris

WOW, what a world of info on this bbs, thanks Alex. I certainly would like to talk to you sometime & down load your brain.

PA24 --- great looking job's. I'm amazed at all those here that do such beautiful work.

Chris, John Gillette at "Classic Guns Inc." charges $200. for a striped,polished Sterly. I look for to speaking with you.

Ken, my brain is filled with the stuff I read here from people like you and other great sources, I doubt I have anything as original or as creative as the work you do to offer the world.

If anybody wants to see it, here is a small video we shot of our process awhile back. In this clip we are using a smaller furnace (the bigger one is right behind it visible in the corner) and we are using only a 5 gallon bucket for a quench tank with no airline which is a setup we used to use frequently for small parts with good results. You can also see our "high tech" toaster oven in the background that we use to draw the parts once their out of the quench. We have more sophisticated furnaces, but the toaster oven works and it is cheap. Anyway, here's the link.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v733/44-henry/?action=view&current=ColorCaseVideo.flv

If you ask Holland or Purdey they get their case hardening done by St Ledger in Birmingham, England. Friends in the trade tell me there are only two others who are in his league or equal, Doug Turnbull in the USA and Schilling in Austria, best, Mike Bailey