Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Flanders
(Post 116788)
Edgar on this?
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I'm here, just taking it all in.
As You and Dave have pointed out, absent actual records supplied to Parker from the mills, doing a chemical and photo-micrograph analysis are really the only definitive way to put the argument to bed. Most likely, collecting a range of samples and maintaining traceability would be difficult. It
would be possible to analyze samples using x-ray florescent spectrometers, which are every bit as accurate as wet-lab analysis, and photo-micrograph analysis non-destructively, That said, what owner of a Peerless barreled gun is going to volunteer up his gun? Who can blame them for not wanting to take a risk of a small blemish where they polished it and etched it?
The technical ability of raw material suppliers to supply a low alloy steel goes back a long way, but what made one company stand out was their ability to certify it. That required in-house analytical labs that had the capacity and skill to analyze each heat of steel, and each heat-treat lot, as well as a physical testing department to machine and pull tensile specimens. While I made castings as large as 25,000 pounds for rather particular customers like Electric Boat, and GE Steam Turbine, I also made them down to a few pounds, and those little castings could barely be used for paper weights for the reams of documentation that ultimately drove up the price.
Every alloy is defined by it's range of individual elements, but also by it's heat treatment. A set of Vulcan steel barrels may have the same chemical analysis as a set of Acme or Peerless barrels, but those high end barrels may have a much finer grain structure, achieved from very precise times and temperatures. Does HTA stand for 'Heat Treated, Annealed"? I don't think so, simply because annealing essentially yields a nearly dead soft, stress free material. It's just my guess that it might stand for Heat Treated Alloy Steel. Those heat treat cycles for C, Cr,Ni,Mo steels are Normalizing, to achieve hardness and tensile strengths, and Tempering, to achieve ductility. It does no good to heat treat it to a high tensile strength, and have it shatter like glass.
If one supplier had orders for tubes, ultimately to be used in V and A grade guns, he may have made them all from the same heat of steel, and maybe even the same heat treat lots. He may have simply been asked to certify a certain number or quantity of rough tubes. In our own company, some castings may have gone out the door at $2.50 a pound, and others, of the same metallurgical history, at $50.00 / pound. It's how much paper with signatures that went with it that made the difference.
