Would a ceramics kiln work for annealing Mauser actions? I am going to anneal them before I work on them. It appears that I can pick these kilns pretty cheap. Thanks for any help in advance.

Chris

Oh I Just realized that I put this in the wrong group. Was supposed to be in "Gunsmithing" sorry!

works for heat treating AK-type receivers.

cannot see why it would not work for a mauser receiver.

you will get scaling unless you protect against it.

how will you measure temp? I use a thermocouple and a PID controller.

you could cheap out and just use a type K thermocouple and a voltmeter.

LMK if you want more details.

You would avoid scaling for the most part if you did a 'sub-critical anneal' instead of a full anneal. 1200-1250F for 2 or 3 hours.

doesn't work very well. gets to hot and uncontrollable at temps required

Yes, they will work. Depends on the model, and chamber size. Big ones are hard to control accurately. The smaller ones work fine. I have three heat treat ovens, and use a Paragon ceramic kiln for small parts. They need an automatic temp controller though. The manual ones are not easy to set to a desired temp.

Keep in mind that the top load ones aren't really designed to be opened and closed hot. They can be used that way, but be very careful not to drop the lid or jar it too hard. And wear gauntlet gloves and a face shield.

Parts can be coated in scale preventing compound if you aren't heating to really high temp like <1350. At higher temps those compounds tend to flake off. Just my experience with them.

I have had good results using 304 stainless heat treating foil to wrap the parts. A little powdered BBQ charcoal can be added to help further prevent scale buildup. It acts as an oxygen absorber, or getter (technical term for it).

Mete and Delloro gave good advice as well. PID kiln controllers can be picked up on Ebay cheap and are easy to wire up.

Jeremy