Wyoming Armory?????

[oldred]

Any of you have experience with Wyoming Armory? I am nearly finished with my new High Wall receiver and this time I used 8620 steel instead of 4140 with the intent of color case hardening rather than blue. I have searched the 'net and most of the outfits that do this and have examples of their work, also all the YouTube videos on the subject, all seem to come up with the same thing I have been able to do with my somewhat limited experimentation with this process and that's that they all seem to come out kind of like a Grey base color with shades of blue and little else. Turnbull of course has excellent coloring with great variation but they are sort of spendy for what they do, over $300 to do a bare High Wall receiver and that's with it already polished and ready to pop into the oven. Now back to my question, Wyoming Armory's examples seem to be as colorful as Turnbull's but at a little more than half the price but although I have heard of them I know little about them except for what I have seen on their web site. So it comes down to Turnbull or Wyoming armory, no question about Turnbull but for the price difference I am leaning toward Wyoming Armory, anyone have any dealings with them or seen first hand the work they do?


As I said earlier just looking at what people call color case hardening on YouTube I think I would just rather have it blued, basically every one of them and most on the 'net are just a two tone of Grey with a couple of different shades of blue that just doesn't look all that good to me. That is exactly the results I have gotten with my experimentation, so far I have made 5 attempts (on various pieces of 8620, not actual gun parts yet) and the results have been dismal compared to what both Turnbull and Wyoming Armory seem to be able to do.

[AJB]

Before you give up on color case hardening you might want to study this thread:

http://marlin-collectors.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3732

[frank505]

Keith at Wyoming armory does fine gun work.

[oldred]

Well I just finished that loooooong read provided in the link above and it was very enlightening indeed! I discovered a few things I probably did wrong with the most important being that I changed the quench water with each attempt, apparently the quench benefits greatly from being "seasoned" by several prior quenchings. I see enough there to encourage me to try again and not totally give up but still I think I have lost the nerve to attempt this with my receiver, I just have way to much time, sweat and even blood (needed stitches!) in this thing to take a chance on screwing it up. I have decided that this one will go to either Turnbull or Wyoming Armory and at this point I had already about decided on the latter but I thought I would toss this out there first to see if anyone had anything negative I might need to know, apparently not the case and they seem to have an excellent reputation from what I can find out. I will probably give them a call in the next few days and see what I can arrange and find out whether or not they will even accept a non-factory receiver.

I have to admit that those colors pictured on the Marlin forum at that link are what I am looking for and there really doesn't seem to be any Black magic involved after all. I figure that Turnbull and very likely Wyoming Armory also probably use one of the Cyanide formulas to produce the vivid array of colors and patterns and that is their "secret", I will leave that to the pros and I wouldn't mess with that stuff even if I had access to it but from what I have read it does produce fantastic results.

[pietro]

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There's a 3rd source for CCH - Mike Hunter, over on www.levergunscommunity.com (http://www.levergunscommunity.com)


http://www.mikehunterrestorations.com/images/finishes_black.jpg



He has a website: http://www.mikehunterrestorations.com/

Beside converting Winchester & clone rifles to takedowns, I know he does excellent refinishing work, removing tang safeties from Miroku M1886/86's, & filling the resulting hole in the top tang prior to stamping original Winchester-type tang markings, etc, etc.


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[BrentD]

I have used WA and had good results. I'm surprised that they are that cheap - most of these places are within a few dollars of each other with regards to price.

Turn around time is something I would want to know about.

Here is what you don't want to happen:

This

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~jessie/PPB/Marlin/Marlin%201895/1st%20case%20colors%20Left.jpg

becomes this
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~jessie/PPB/Marlin/Marlin%201895/Broken%20Marlin.jpg

[M-Tecs]

Normally 4130 and 4140 are not color cased due to the base metal becoming to brittle. Turnbull has solved that issue. I would love to know how he does it. So would everyone else.

[oldred]

I have used WA and had good results. I'm surprised that they are that cheap - most of these places are within a few dollars of each other with regards to price.

Turn around time is something I would want to know about.

Here is what you don't want to happen:

This

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~jessie/PPB/Marlin/Marlin%201895/1st%20case%20colors%20Left.jpg

becomes this
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~jessie/PPB/Marlin/Marlin%201895/Broken%20Marlin.jpg


Apparently one of the through hardening alloys, probably 4140, and a good example of why these alloys should not be color case hardened. Actually they don't "case" harden at all but rather harden all the way through and as is apparent there become very brittle unless tempered after hardening but the draw temperature would ruin the colors and defeat the purpose of doing this in the first place. My other rifles were built using 4140 and so color case was not an option, I chose 8620 as the material this time just so that I could color case the receiver and associated parts this time.

I think even Turnbull will do 4140 only within specific limitations? Whatever their method is they sure do some fantastic work!

[BrentD]

No, it is not 4140. It is an 1895 Marlin made in 1899, and it was effed up by the people that did this case coloring.

[oldred]

Well for sure it's not 4140 if it was made in 1899!

Not sure what could have happened there but during that period there were a lot of changes going on with steel alloys and I suppose that could have been what was referred to at the time as "special nickel steel" but I thought that was only used in barrels? Since that receiver hardened all the way through it evidently was not a candidate for case hardening in the first place, was it color cased when new? This is a bit of a mystery since low carbon steels will not harden and get brittle like that, the thin "case" gets hard after the quench due to the added carbon that is from the carbon pack of the process and this is normally only a few thousandths deep with the interior of the part being unaffected.

This very interesting and I would sure like to know more of the particulars of this situation since I have done quite a bit of heat treating, mostly on machine parts, and have a pretty good understanding of the process but it's the art of adding the colors that has left me severely lacking.

[oldred]

.


There's a 3rd source for CCH - Mike Hunter, over on www.levergunscommunity.com (http://www.levergunscommunity.com)


http://www.mikehunterrestorations.com/images/finishes_black.jpg



He has a website: http://www.mikehunterrestorations.com/

Beside converting Winchester & clone rifles to takedowns, I know he does excellent refinishing work, removing tang safeties from Miroku M1886/86's, & filling the resulting hole in the top tang prior to stamping original Winchester-type tang markings, etc, etc..


Yes, Mike Hunter! I don't know why I didn't think of him already, he helped me out on another forum with some bluing problems I was having and I should have thought of him first. I guess I just never thought about him doing CCH work but then I do remember that he does indeed do that, I think I will shoot him an Email and discuss it with him.

Thanks for reminding me!

[BrentD]

Well for sure it's not 4140 if it was made in 1899!

Not sure what could have happened there but during that period there were a lot of changes going on with steel alloys and I suppose that could have been what was referred to at the time as "special nickel steel" but I thought that was only used in barrels? Since that receiver hardened all the way through it evidently was not a candidate for case hardening in the first place, was it color cased when new? This is a bit of a mystery since low carbon steels will not harden and get brittle like that, the thin "case" gets hard after the quench due to the added carbon that is from the carbon pack of the process and this is normally only a few thousandths deep with the interior of the part being unaffected.

This very interesting and I would sure like to know more of the particulars of this situation since I have done quite a bit of heat treating, mostly on machine parts, and have a pretty good understanding of the process but it's the art of adding the colors that has left me severely lacking.


It was originally case hardened. I polished it and I polished/filed through the CC to resurface the metal.

The place that did the work is well known and I have used them before. They claim the metal must have been too hard when it came to them, which is BS since I had just been polishing it. They claim they have zero responsibility etc etc. I wasn't inclined to fight with them that day simply wrote them off. But clearly they overheated the metal, perhaps ran it too long, and I don't know what else, but it was not like that when they received it. Now I have to find someone else to do my CC work. Which sucks.

[AJB]

If you don't mind me asking, what were you doing when the tang snapped?

[BrentD]

i was putting on the barrel. It slipped and hit the floor. Of course, one should not drop a receiver on the floor, but it should have bent, not broken - not like that.

On the other hand, it was probably a good thing I did drop it. A stiff load of 3f behind 420 gr of bullet might have "broke" it across my nose. :(

In any event, it was not brittle like that when it went to Classic Guns Inc.

[AJB]

I can't tell you how many drops I've had but none resulted in this kind of damage. It would be interesting to have the tang area hardness tested to see exactly where it is on the Rockwell scale.

[.22-10-45]

I've had originals re-cased in past...and there is always a risk of warpage or cracking when dealing with this kind of temp. But heres a thought: Since the reciever was originally case-hardened back in the day...would re-casing..adding more carbon to an already carburized steel deepen that carbon layer to the point that thin cross sections would be overcasedand harden through in quenching? Just a guess?

[oldred]

I've had originals re-cased in past...and there is always a risk of warpage or cracking when dealing with this kind of temp. But heres a thought: Since the reciever was originally case-hardened back in the day...would re-casing..adding more carbon to an already carburized steel deepen that carbon layer to the point that thin cross sections would be overcasedand harden through in quenching? Just a guess?



It would not be possible, well maybe it would IF the part was way overheated and IF it was left in the carbonizing soak for way too long, but it would take some gross carelessness for that to happen. Normally case hardening is only a thin layer measured in the thousandths so for the metal to get brittle all the way through like that would mean that metal from that era would have had to have a fairly high carbon content to start with.

[BrentD]

Gross carelessness is the only answer I come up with regardless. And it is really sad because these guys have done a lot of super work and have incredible turn around times to boot. But this is not acceptable, nor was their explanation.

[scb]

Be careful who you get to do the work for you. I had one guy tell me that if the colors didn't come out to his liking he's just re-polish and do it over and over 'til he got what he wanted. Case hardening of course wasn't just for the colors they are a "sider effect". It adds carbon to the steel and can make it brittle. To test this we took a piece of .125" x .5" 1018 steel about 2" long and hardened it repeatedly with Kasenit and after 6 or 7 times it broke like a piece of glass when struck with a hammer. If anyone says they do that to a receiver run in the other direction. I've gotten excellent work back from Color Case Company.

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~jessie/PPB/Marlin/Marlin%201895/Broken%20Marlin.jpg

[BrentD]

I've gotten excellent work back from Color Case Company.



If they are the guys in Illinois, so have I - until they effed up this action.

[Chill Wills]

Old Red
Here is an example of Wyoming Armory - maybe not the best picture but the colors are first rate.

[cowboybart]

I have seen some of WA's work (not case hardening though) and it is top notch.

[John Taylor]

The broken tang might be able to be welded. I have done several Winchesters and one or two marlins over the years. Talk to Mike Hunter about annealing it and maybe bluing it instead of color case so it does not break again.

[BrentD]

It has been welded and normalized. It will eventually be colored again.

[oldred]

Just my opinion BUT, I personally would have serious reservations about case hardening that piece because obviously it will through harden. If this is due to the original metal or later absorbed carbon from previous heat treating normalizing is not likely to remove all that carbon and certainly won't change the original metal if that was the cause. I agree with John metal that has exhibited this tendency should be blued, it can be treated as a through hardening metal but due to the unknown and likely primitive alloying efforts (due to the time period) IMO case hardening could create a very brittle action.

[scb]

If they are the guys in Illinois, so have I - until they effed up this action.
No these folks. http://fflgundealers.net/color-case-company-inc.html
They don't seem to have a web presence. It's been a few years since I've had them do any work for me. They may not still be I business. Funny how time slips away.