Heres my thoughts/suggestions:
When working up your CCH technique change only one variable.
Dont Practice on a good guns; lots of cheap imported/semi-finished cast actions you can practice on.
Use fresh water each quench, goes back to changing only one variable. Each time you quench, it adds more stuff to the water, so in essence youve changed the composition of the water.
Dont reuse the bone/wood char mix; at least not at first. Again goes back to: Change only one variable. Each time you quench the mix changes, especially if youve tried different ratios.
Everyone talks about cleanliness when rust bluing, cleanliness when CCH is even more important. Winchester would boil the parts in Gasoline I asked OSHA about that, they had a fit. Your parts need to be clean, oil and water free, as an example, my cleaning procedure is a 4 step process.
Take detailed copious notes i.e... Wood/bone ratio, quench temp, soak time, water temp, O2 level in water etc. and then write down results.
When doing the above, dont rely on a sample size of 1. Do at least 5 quenches exactly the same way so you get an average, then change one variable.
Remember, even if you do everything correctly, you may not get perfect results. Ive had frames where one side is absolutely beautiful, and the other side has little or no color. Two frames quenched side by side, everything identical one perfect one less than perfect... it happens.
Also keep in mind theres only about 3-5% of these old guns that have retained 90-100% of their original CCH. A very small sample size that you, and everyone else is comparing your colors to. Also, dont compare colors to DTs, mine or anyone elses, thats their colors. I have a notebook of 100s of original colors that I compare to.
Respectfully
Mike
