Some actions being heat treated is akin to painting a tin barn..others need it done..Actually you can get a pretty good idea by running a 3 cornor file over the locking lugs in that Mausers are heat treated on the skin (Outside) and left soft on the inside, Paul Mausers answer to if a blow out occurs a Mauser with puff up like a balloon, may split a little if a real bad load wherein the pre 64 mod 70 is so hard it will come apart like a handgranade sending shrapnel in all directions, fortunately its very hard and usually stupid to blow up a mod. 70, but a case full of bullseye will do it and has, again some folks can screw up an anvil with a powder puff..

The guys in Salt Lake City do a great job, send it to them to soften, do your work then send it back to be hardened. A number of good gunsmith do that.

So it comes down to 2 different systems, both , IF, done properly will work fine ! Case hardened or full hardened .
If you want variables you should also include the fact that many companies are controlled by financial groups as REM is. Their investors have the prime need to make money. Hire bean counters, cheapen the product. BTW Gander Mtn now has declared bankruptcy.
So , though advances are still being made in metallurgy it may take years for those ideas to get to the eventual buyer . He may ruin the whole thing by grossly overloading !

That 'IF' is the rub.

Finding a HT firm that can do the case hardening w/o messing it up. Apparently it isn't so easy, otherwise we wouldn't have this thread.

With the exception of a few custom builders like Mr Wiebe, the reasons for using basically soft, mild steel and casehardening are long gone.

Without chromemoly, HSS, carbide and rigid high speed machinery butter soft mild steel and case hardening was a necessity in the 1900s to produce a firearm, but that was 100 years in the past.

Going that route these days is uneconomical (financially non viable for all but customs), adds another layer of hassle and risks a total loss after all the machining and fitting have been invested.

I do not heat treat the volume of receivers Mr. Wiebe does, but I haven't had one lost yet. Is it a risk, sure...

When a friend and I were developing our Color Case hardening, and lets be honest, he did the work, we only had warping after successive heat treating operations. I think we did one receiver 5 times in a row without annealing. We saw visually noticeable warping. If you set a scale next to it, it was plain as day. We are both machinists though, and I doubt 90% of people would be able to tell. Bolt cycled without issue.

We annealed it, re heatreated it, and it was back to normal. We used no arbors or mandrels, which I suspect would certainly help. Problem is they act like a heat sink, and when quenching, seem to disrupt the colors.

I have built 700's and shot them out to 1000 yds, (a little past) and have not found them to be impressive at the least. They require as much machining as a 98 mauser, and require nearly the same work for different reasons, lack of quality. The only difference being, when you are done hacking at it, you do not need to heat treat it.

It's nice working in a high volume shop because examples have a habit of falling into your hands almost on demand. This is a Uberti hammer and I'm 90% sure they are made from 8620 which is the Italian, Spanish go-to for a lot of gun parts. The case is brutally hard and the gun is almost new but you can already see how the firing pin has impressed about .020 inch into the hammer face. The case on the top of the hammer has begun to chip away from impact on the firing pin. Also, where the bolt drags on the top of the hammer the case has been cut through and it no longer works slick and smooth like it used to. The sears will be the next to go. Perazzi also had a similar problem with a lot of the old pre 1980s case hardened MX8 shotgun receivers. The primers would hammer back against the standing breech and leave deep impressions in the face causing the firing pins to peen in and stick and the primers to back out and make the gun hard to open. The fix was to mill a dovetail down the face of the receiver and put in a tool steel insert and re-drill the firing pin holes. Perazzis have NEVER been a cheap gun. They eventually went to through hardening steel to solve the problem. I had quit doing warranty for them by then and was never privy to the new steel type although I suspect it's 4140 or 4340.

Uberti Hammer by Rod Henrickson, on Flickr

quote:

Originally posted by Atkinson:
Some actions being heat treated is akin to painting a tin barn..others need it done..Actually you can get a pretty good idea by running a 3 cornor file over the locking lugs in that Mausers are heat treated on the skin (Outside) and left soft on the inside, Paul Mausers answer to if a blow out occurs a Mauser with puff up like a balloon, may split a little if a real bad load wherein the pre 64 mod 70 is so hard it will come apart like a handgranade sending shrapnel in all directions, fortunately its very hard and usually stupid to blow up a mod. 70, but a case full of bullseye will do it and has, again some folks can screw up an anvil with a powder puff..

The guys in Salt Lake City do a great job, send it to them to soften, do your work then send it back to be hardened. A number of good gunsmith do that.

Blanchards or industrial? Aren't they both in salt lake?
Don

This thread just confirms my thought that some gunmakers don't know what they are doing.From what I gather you need the right steel to make a good solid action.I don't know what that steel is but I think some do know.

Didn't know a simple question would start a fight in a phone booth. Fact is that I'm not a real fan of re heat treating just for the hell of it.

Teds Blackburn once said to me: The German's have forgotten more about carburizing than Americans will ever find out "...Boy! that should get t he juices boiling!!!
But, before you string me up, remember it was not me who said it.

This subject has been considered, reconsidered ad nauseam.

ANY of the steels mentioned, according to a metallurgist friend, will not fail unless the material is stressed beyond it's elasticity...And ANY material can and probably will fail if it is.

So..enouogh said on my part, gonna leave any further discussion to all these here experts on AR

Yep, those Germans are a lot smarter than Americans. LOL

Blackburn is essentially correct. Keep the guns in the chamberings they were designed for, at the pressures and bolt thrusts they were designed for, there should be no problems. There will of course always be some hiccups in design.

But, if you insist on trying to make a bomb out of them, you will have a bomb. Pretty simple mathematics.

quote:

Originally posted by p dog shooter:

quote:

Any thoughts?

Yea stop using old out dated materials.

Then use modern actions that are far superior in the metallurgy.

And Engravers love working on hardened actions.....

How much of the action really needs to be hard anyway?

I would think that what really needs to be looked at is a way to build these actions so that any parts that wear can be easily replaced.

Like for example. Why can't a bolt have a head on it (the part where the locking lugs are) that screws on to the rest of the bolt, so that if the locking lugs wear too much a new head could just be screwed on? Almost every single other industry does this. The automobile industry comes to mind. Something wears out, you buy a part and replace it.
So maybe some type of what do you say "bushed" locking lugs inside the action, or maybe replaceable surfaces on the locking lugs that can be unscrewed and replaced with new ones if the old ones wear out. then all of this stuff about heat treating, at least on new actions, could be put to bed. Maybe somebody could even make replacement parts for the old actions as well.

quote:

Originally posted by lindy2:
How much of the action really needs to be hard anyway?

I would think that what really needs to be looked at is a way to build these actions so that any parts that wear can be easily replaced.

Like for example. Why can't a bolt have a head on it (the part where the locking lugs are) that screws on to the rest of the bolt, so that if the locking lugs wear too much a new head could just be screwed on? Almost every single other industry does this. The automobile industry comes to mind. Something wears out, you buy a part and replace it.
So maybe some type of what do you say "bushed" locking lugs inside the action, or maybe replaceable surfaces on the locking lugs that can be unscrewed and replaced with new ones if the old ones wear out. then all of this stuff about heat treating, at least on new actions, could be put to bed. Maybe somebody could even make replacement parts for the old actions as well.

That is a great idea, but folks in the custom Mauser game tend, largely, to be purists. Just about every commercial two-lug front-locking bolt action design is more or less based on the 98 Mauser. Jon Speed's Mauser Archive", details several prototype Mauser action designs, including round bodied enclosed top designs. British enfields have replaceable bolt heads for headspace adjustment. Savage actions use replaceable bolt heads, I assume, to make manufacturing easier. The fact is, on Mauser actions,locking lugs rarely fail or even distort. Lug recesses set back, and once that starts to happen you don't want to simply replace a bolt head. Once that relatively thin layer of hardness is compromised, its only going to get worse. With modern commercial sporting 98 actions, none of this is really an issue.

Maybe a little off topic but I also recommend the outfit in SLC, Blanchard's I believe it is. I used them for some obscure purpose way back in the '80s and my experience then was good. DW

Duane from a non-gunsmith,but I've used blachard's too. Recommended in Kuhnausen's book . Thank's again for the floorplate, still owe you more charizo .

You don't owe me, but having said that, tips, gratuities and bribes are accepted

Hello Duane Keeping in mind that this is from an amateur. I've used Blanchard based on Kuhnhausen's recommendation in his book. Thank's again for all the effort on the floorplate, I still owe you more chorizo, if you like it.

quote:

Originally posted by Duane Wiebe (CG&R):

ANY of the steels mentioned, according to a metallurgist friend, will not fail unless the material is stressed beyond it's elasticity...And ANY material can and probably will fail if it is.

Duane, that is certainly true, and not only for steel. However, the point where elasticity ends and plasticity begins would be vastly different depending on composition and heat treatment. Neither mild steel nor high tensile strength mar-aging steel will fail if statically stressed to just below that point. It's just that there is a factor of ten between the different loads required to bring each material to that point...

JV..interesting point..thanks. Now.. if I could figure out how to use a smart phone!

Just as a matter of note:

When I was operating as a proof house for Remington. I did run Remington proof loads through quite a few old military Mausers for guys who wanted to build them into sporting rifles. We simply screwed in a 30-06 barrel, checked the headspace, locked them in the tank, ran a factory load and then a red nose through them. None of them suffered any I'll effects or change in headspace. The 30-06 created a great deal more bolt thrust than the original chamberings and the proof loads were about 1/3rd over pressure as well. I think most headspace problems in those old guns is created by continuous pounding from high pressure rounds or simple, handloader oriented idiocy.

WEll..not a happy ending. I pulled the plug on Kowalski because I felt either they might be too busy or uninterested, lack of communication, etc.

The folks at Pac Met said they were doing only about $2000.00 per year in Mauser actions, and that's why they got out of it. But promised to confer with Kowalski regarding their methods. This may or may not have happened. Not sure why they recommended Kowalski in the first place

Any rate, off to Blanchards.

Smoke, mirrors and bullshit is the real world of the gun business

I feel your pain Duane. There is so much new (and old) tech out there that would be so nice to take advantage of. But it all comes down to us being what in their eyes, appears to be a tiny little toy industry that always wants one-offs all the time and is always overly fussy about what they see to be as silly little details. To make matters worse. Most of the people looking for their services are probably not like us. I imagine, like me, the price is the price and you just pass it on to the customer. But I bet the majority of the firearms related folks that approach these professionals like heat treating facilities, platers, steel and chemical suppliers and the like are the exact same people that call us every day trying to grind the last penny out of 22 sight and then call us crooks and hang up. Some times I get a little pissed when I can't get a half dozen parts water cut or a single joint of exotic steel. But I always catch myself and think back to the last guy who hung up on me because I told him it costs $100 to make some freak screw or spring and remind myself that I'm the pain in the ass this time. I can feel their pain too.

quote:

Originally posted by Duane Wiebe (CG&R):

The folks at Pac Met said they were doing only about $2000.00 per year in Mauser actions, and that's why they got out of it.

Wow!
That is way smaller than I thought it would be.
Toss in all the gubermint taxes, regulations, bookeeping and hassles and they were losing money.

Well...the smoke, mirrors and BS is a two way street. So..who knows

I know that most people over the age of 25 have seen this brochure by John Westrom which contains a section on his thoughts about heat treating. So I thought I would post it for those of us who are under 25.

I've received the action I had sent off to Blanchards. It was carburized and marquenched (look it up online) with a case depth of .015-.025 35 HRC

While there was some scale, it was removed with fine glass beads and no damage to proof marks or lettering could be observed. Bolt worked fine, no apparent warp

The folks were very pleasant to deal with and turn around was less then 10 days.

They are professionals and will not accept gun work unless accompanied with FFL.

Definitely on my "go to"list

Back in 1990-something Douglas would not rebarrel my 1909 until I (my gunsmith) sent it to be "rehardened" . He used Blanchards back then.

Rich

I just sent them six so we'll see soon.; they are very nice people. On another note, I knew John Westrom; he butchered up many nice collectable Mausers.

quote:

Originally posted by dpcd:
...he butchered up many nice collectable Mausers.

A lot of folks on AR, myself included, have no shame! I prefer not to butcher rifles if just a desired action can be found though.

I just received a highly engraved Hagn Single shot action, lever and breech block back from Blanchard. They Carburized these parts in the same manner that you would a 98. I spent about 10 minutes hard fitting the breech block back into the receiver. It was excellent work

I am a very happy camper