Quote:
Originally Posted by Stephen Hodges
Perhaps it was the way that specific guns metal took the process.
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Steve, all Parker hammerless receivers started life as a forging. Billings & Spencer, and later, Bourdon Forge made these for Parker and they would have been received in a 'normalized and tempered' state. The short answer is they are a very uniform hunk of metal.
The reason for pattern variation (The Good, The Bad, and the Just Plain Ugly) is entirely dependent on the process, but not the part itself. Poor packing of one receiver, using the same recipe as another, well packed receiver, will be so entirely different, one could easily assume they were done by different heat treaters. The random nature of all Parkers is due to the fact that no receiver can be packed the same with respect to orientation in the packing box, exact mixture of ground charcoal, and other carbon bearing organic materials, heating, and final quenching.
At Colt's, 4 SAA receivers would be packed in the same packing box, cover then compressed, and clamped. After the quench, no two parts would look exactly alike.