Traditional charcoal & bone case color

[edgarspencer]

Pawel, have you ever taken either Rockwell, or Brinell hardness tests after your temper cycle?

Second set of four pictures is very typical of Purdey and H&H.
Colors of your work may not replicate Parker CC, but they are a lot nice than some work I have seen. Colors can be affected by packing materials. Often, Bone, Charcoal, Leather, and other organic materials were mixed. Borax was used by both Colt and Winchester in the 1870-1890 era.

Short soak time at upper critical temperatures can cause varying colors on frames where section thicknesses vary. Temper/ Stress Relieveing cycle is important to reduce stresses developed in the Normalize and quench cycle, especially if quench medium is water, not oil or glycol.

We heat treated 7200- 10,000 tons of carbon, low alloy and stainless steel per year, in both inert, and atmospheric furnaces. One quench tank was as big as our swim club pool. We also sold a lot of heat treat pots to Colt, in West Hartford. I got to know the heat treat forman over there pretty well. Sadly, they're gone now.

[Pawel Janusz]

Thank you Mr. Edgar Spencer, I really like your post, very helpful and creative, yes I did test. I have my process working very well and with the existing schedule I didn't have time to experiment and / or create samples that I'm sure all you dear members will love, but I did got already 5 actions of old junk shotguns made out of mild steel that I'm going to use to experiment with, I will do that as soon as I move all to Missouri. Cc process has a lot of variables and experimenting is about trying one at the time and observation and conclusion so I will dedicate 2 weeks to develop different parretns, colors, dark or light.
Please Share, thank you dear members
Paweł Janusz