Please comment on these case colors
 

What is the source of these case colors? Do you think these were redone by Remington or somebody else?

i don't know but i like them :)

Not sure what it is, but they are just not quite right, at least to my eyes. A little blotchy and not enough blue....I don't know but they don't look original to me.

I have an olp 20 PH that has exact colors but Could be a old,old redo?
Several guys at Southern said thet thought original..who knows ?
Bill:rolleyes:

Bill, the reason I asked is because this is the VHE that I just bought. It looks TOO perfect. The wood, fit, finish, everything looks 100% original except the colors. They look too yellow and not blue enough. This VHE is from 1920 (as I recall).

The seller got it from an estate just outside of Gloucester and claimed that it was totally original. The family member who placed it on consignment with the dealer said it had never been shot and had never been taken out of his great-uncle's safe. I have my doubts because of the color, but I liked it enough to buy it either way. Other than the color the photos would suggest that it came out of the Meriden shop. Either it's original or a heck of a nice refurbish.

Original Parker case colors have more blue than straw. Those are nice colors, but I don't think they are original. Great gun.

I'm with you, Ed. These don't look blue enough to my eye either. There are other photos that show quite a bit more blue, but not as much as you'd expect. Also, there's a small difference in the coloring of the butt stock and the forend. However, if someone had it restocked why would they have left the LOP to the front trigger 13 13/16ths? The darned thing is so perfect otherwise it makes me wonder when/how/who did the case coloring?

Wonderful gun John. Congrats! My PH 16 gauge has colors almost identicle to yours.And it is also a New England gun. My thoughts would be the Ohio Case Color Co. Keep in mind the blues are the first color to subdue in my experience.

This gun appears to have been totally redone. These case colors are very typical of those done by Frank Lefever of Herkimer NY in the late 1950s up to the late 1960s. They are cyanide, not bone charcoal colors. (If they were original Meriden colors they would be bone charcoal). Parker Bros. dabbled in cyanide colors just before the sellout to Remington but this gun is way before that. Also, the wood is so absolutely pristine that it does not make sense for an original condition gun; oxidation alone, inside or outside of a safe, would have dulled the finish sheen long ago. Also note the extremely crisp checkering; even casual handling of "safe queens" takes off the needle-sharp points in short order. (To give credit to the consignor and the seller, it probably has not been shot since it was redone).

This gun reminds me of the very recently-PA-auctioned CHE 20ga., whose condition was advertised as "totally original, untouched", until (whoops!) a relative of the owner "seemed to remember" the owner having the gun "touched up" years and years ago. Quite appropriately, the auction house issued a revised description of the gun, which helped reign in the hysterical bidding which usually surrounds these 'virgin' guns.

But now you have a gun that all of this has already been done. It is a great looking gun and be satisfied that it is what it is and above all - enjoy it!

Kevin,
Thanks for your input. I am confused about one thing - the method of case coloring. I used to own a S&W Elite Gold shotgun and it's case coloring was VERY similar to that on this shotgun. Everyone who ever discussed or described these guns from Turkey identified the case coloring as "authentic bone charcoal case coloring". The case colors on this VHE look for all the world like those on the S&W Elite Gold.

Link: http://www.billhanusbirdguns.com/swgoldelite.html

In any event, you're right - it's a gun ready to be shot. The deal I struck with the seller was based on my suspicion that it was not original and the ultimate purchase price reflected that. Either way I'm happy to have it and will definitely be smoothing off some of those checkering diamonds in the future.

Thanks again for your input.

It looks like a total redo to me also. The receiver screws look polished and to not fit as snugly in their holes as originals. The small triangles? around the bbls at the breeches seem to be polished out enough for a reblue that they aren't original. The nose on the stock comb doesn't look right...I think. The polish on the receiver looks more "polished" than original. If you look very closely at most originals there are errant file marks and they just aren't polished like that. Some of the buttstock wood seems just a tad more proud of the lower tang metal than Parker usually did. And the colors just don't look right as Kevin says. It is a gorgeous redo however, nicer than original to some degree. Not many are that well done. Very very nice gun.

Thanks Richard. I agree. As I originally said, it looks TOO perfect. The proud wood around the trigger guard, the fact that the checkering on the grip looks sharper than the checkering on the fore end, and the color of the buttstock is a bit lighter than the fore end are all telling indicators as well.

None the less, it will be a fine shooter (although I wish it were a lightweight #1 frame instead of a #2!).

John and Richard - the very best cyanide color jobs can fool you; the process is very tricky to effect the "almost bone charcoal" color effect. If you recall the very earliest Perazzi guns imported by Ithaca into the US in the very early 1970s, you will remember the "zebra stripe" effect Perazzi achieved by constantly dipping and removing the receiver into a cyanide bath at the proper critical temperature. By lingering just a fraction of a second in the hot liquid, the darker violet-bluish lines would take; the short-time dip produced the much lighter, cloudy-white color. This process was an immersion-removal series process.

Cyanide colors can also be manipulated to achieve a much more even surface distribution by simply "paddling" the heated solution with the receiver; removing it briefly for examination, and reimmersing it in the bath for darker and more random color development. In this manner the receiver is kept in constant motion in the heated liquid and withdrawn periodically for inspection; when the colors "look right', it is removed and allowed to cool. So far as I know, once it is removed from the liquid bath, no more color intensification or migration takes place.

In the true classic animal-bone charcoal case coloring process as used by Parker Bros. and others, all of the components to be colored are packed into a powdered-laden crucible and fired at a prescribed temperature for a prescribed period of time. When the time has elapsed, the contents of the crucible is removed and immediately dumped into a vat of water. Years ago now, Oscar Gaddy published an exhaustive treatise on what takes place next; depth of penetration of individual component molecules in the mixture to achieve color, depth and hue of the finish, etc. In his work, he stressed that the dome of gas created when the red-hot metal parts hit the water produced rearrangement of molecules in the atomic structure of the metal, and that the secret to producing as nearly original to Parker Bros. colors was the sealing of this dome of gas over the cooling mixture as immediately and safely as possible. Loss of this gas volume, he hypothesized, was the reason for colors of diminished hue, colorations, and surface refraction.

A few years ago in Las Vegas, Doug Turnbull gave a captivating seminar on how his father Terry worked for years experimenting with the ingredients of the crucible mix to produce the Parker Bros.-like colors, and how he (Doug) continued the crusade to the method he uses today. If you want to see (IMHO) as close to Parker Bros. original bone charcoal case colors, take a look at Turnbull's standard ad where he shows the upgraded A-1 Special which began life as a VHE. They are spectacular.

Lastly, when Parker Bros. sold out to Remington and the manufacture was move to Ilion, one of the Storm brothers, who held the original ingredient formula for the colors developed at Meriden, went to Ilion to instruct the gunmakers there on how to achieve the original Parker Bros. colors. The time and precision involved in producing the colors was eventually judged by Remington to not be cost-effective, and they then went to the cyanide coloring process. As I mentioned in my earlier post, Parker Bros. actually experimented with the cyanide process themselves, but abandoned it when they could not achieve the depth, color, hue and vibrance of the bone charcoal process. The 'secret formula' for the original Parker Bros. bone charcoal case coloring process died with the Storm brothers, and many have speculated what was actually in it besides the raw animal bone powder. Theories ranged from bits of old shoe leather, plant material, rare-earth minerals, discarded brass belt buckle parts, and on and on. Whatever they put in there, the boys knew how to color a gun!