Parker-Hale receiver ?

Teach

Calling all gunsmiths- - - - - -

Is anyone familiar with the Parker-Hale unfinished receivers that are available from various online vendors? They need finish machining and heat treating, so no FFL is involved in purchasing one. One style is a 98 Mauser design, but made to take an '03 Springfield bolt, while another is 98 Mauser all the way. At an average price of 30 bucks each, I think it's worth a try to finish out one or more of them. Doing the basic machining won't be much of a challenge for anyone who can run a lathe and a milling machine, but I'm wondering what the alloy is. That will influence the heat treat procedure that's going to be necessary once the machining is done. I'm bidding on a heat treat oven on E-bay right now, BTW. Anybody got a SWAG about the type of steel they're made of?
Jerry

tennmike

Not knowing what the steel type is in those actions has kept me from buying some of those actions. I have an electric heat treat furnace, but without knowing what the steel is, wouldn't chance trying it on those actions.

Teach

Update- - - - -I just got an email from Old Western Scrounger, one of the people who are selling the receivers. It's EN9 steel, which is pretty easy to heat treat, according to some research I've done on the web. Now, all I've gotta do is win the auction for a furnace/kiln that Redstone Arsenal has up for auction!

Edit: Gun Parts Co. has the receivers that take the 03 Springfield bolts, and OWS has the straight Mauser receivers, both about the same price. I've ordered one of each.
Jerry

mkk41

Sure about that steel analysis?

According to this EN-9 is SAE-1055 , a plain medium carbon steel. http://www.steelexpress.co.uk/engineeringsteel/EN9.html

Might be easy to machine and heat treat , but I'd want a bit more of a modern stronger alloy.

BTW , I have a new (1yr.old) controlled atmosphere Grieve heat treating oven at work I can use anytime.

Teach

That's the beauty of the Mauser design- - - -it doesn't need a super-strength steel alloy to handle normal bolt lug thrust loads. The only real necessity for heat treating is to minimize wear as the bolt is cycled. The average depth of hardened metal on the bolt camming surfaces of the receiver are about .005"- - - -under that it's just plain steel.
Jerry

jaywapti

Jerry, here's some info. hope this helps,
C-.5 -.6, MN .5 - .8, SI .05 - .35, S .04 max, P .04 max
Annealing 700*C soak, slow cool in oven
Hardening 820 - 840*C Quench in oil or water
Tempering 550 _ 660*C 1hr per 1" of thickness
Hardness range 180 - 230 HB
finishing.com/514/70shtml

JAY

Teach

Thanks, Jay!
Jerry

DoctorWho

Is it better to just case harden it ???

SirGeorgeKillian

So no FFL required because it isnt finished, but would sending it to someone to finish it then make it then a firearm? Would the person finishing the last step then be the manufacturer? Just curious.

Teach

As I understand it, the thing doesn't become a "firearm" until a serial number is applied. Since it's unlikely I'd ever try to sell one of these, it's sort of a moot point. There are a lot of custom black powder guns floating around that have been made from scratch, but that's a whole different can of worms. Front-stuffers have their own unique category, even though they can be just as deadly as a cartridge arm.

I won the auction on the heat-treat oven, BTW. It's at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville Alabama, and I'm waiting on a callback from their shipping coordinator to schedule a pickup appointment. It appears to be new and unused in the ebay pics, at about 10% of the price the manufacturer shows for a similar item. Our tax dollars at work, I guess!
Jerry

SirGeorgeKillian

Interesting....

tennmike

Glad you won the bid on the heat treat oven! That will be a good addition to your shop. Sure will come in handy for some of the stuff you do, and will be able to do easier.

jaywapti

Jerry, congrats on getting the oven. Is it a plain oven or an atmosphere controlled oven ? I did a lot of heat treating at the airlines, here's a trick we used that reduced the amount of scaling on steel and stainless parts in a plain oven.
We would drill a 3/8 hole thru the door, insert a 3/8 stainless tube connected to a Argon tank with a flow meter, put the part in the oven, flood the chamber with Argon and set the temp. leave the argon flowing untill the part comes out to be quenched. At the start turn the flowmeter up high after 4 - 5 min. turn it down just enough to keep a constant flow.
Some parts were wrapped in s/s foil, some parts due to there shape couldnt be wrapped tight enough, we used the Argon weather the parts were wrapped or not.

JAY

Teach

It's actually a ceramic kiln, but the temp control goes up to 2300 degrees F. which should be plenty hot for just about any metal treating I need to do. Here's a similar item from the Paragon website:



On the ebay site the thing looks brand new. I'm headed down to Huntsville to pick it up this afternoon. Good idea about the Argon, Jay. We used to do a similar trick when TIG welding stainless steel wine pipe ar Gallo- - - -filled the pipe with Nitrogen to prevent scale from forming on the inside of the pipe as we welded the fittings in place.
Jerry

snake284

Whatever you do you might want to keep in mind that argon, like Nitrogen will not support life and if it blankets a room and you're in it that's not good. Asphyxiation. So make sure wherever you are doing this has good ventilation. We had one guy die from Nitrogen blanketing the area and he was just leaning into an open ended pipe. It gets you before you know it. It doesn't take much.

ghostsniper1

So Im just curious, do you ream the reciever and machine it before or after the heat treating? I know that heat treated steel is harder to machine, but Im wondering if the heat treating changes the machined tolerances if the maching was done prior to heat treating.

tennmike

ghostsniper1 wrote: »

So Im just curious, do you ream the reciever and machine it before or after the heat treating? I know that heat treated steel is harder to machine, but Im wondering if the heat treating changes the machined tolerances if the maching was done prior to heat treating.

Machine first; heat treat after is, or used to be, most common practice. The only thing you have to worry about is getting uneven heating and warping of the finished part. That doesn't happen if you pay attention, though.

ghostsniper1

Ah gotcha. I was just curious because I know that heat can do some serious warping to steel and I wondered if that might change the machined specs.

Teach

It's a pretty common practice to wrap the part in foil-thin stainless steel to minimize the scale that forms during heat treating. That keeps critical tolerances from changing much, also. Of course, it's necessary to do a final polish if a shiny bluing job is going to be applied. Parkerizing or ceramic coating doesn't require a high polish.
Jerry

ghostsniper1

Is the scaling that you speak of, that bluish, ashy carbon that seems to flake on the surface before being oil quenched???

tennmike

Yes. The surface of the steel will oxidize and form thin scale and flakes if it is in an oxygen atmosphere. Low oxygen atmosphere will produce a black iron scale due to the lack of oxygen. Wrapping in the SS foil helps prevent that, as does an inert gas atmosphere in the oven. I use nitrogen because it's cheap and easy to obtain.

There's also a process that packs the parts in an air tight box of charcoal or graphite powder, and then heated in the oven. The parts are heated and then the lid is removed from the box and the parts dropped in the quench oil. It's a variation of the method used to do color case hardening of steel.

Teach

Yes. It's also evident when heating metal in a forge during blacksmithing operations. The oldtime method of heat-treating involved heating parts red hot with a torch, and burying them in burning charcoal for several hours before oil or water quenching. Heated and quenched metal is brittle, not useful as gun steel. Then the scale would be polished off, and the metal would be "drawn" by reheating to a specific color. That toughened the metal and relieved some of the tendency to fracture. That's how the low serial number 03 Springfields got brittle- - -some of the receivers weren't re-heated to the right color and ended up brittle, not just hardened. Custom knife blades get a similar treatment to make them tough and flexible, not glass-hard.
Jerry

Edit: Color casehardening involves oven-heating to approximately the same temperatures as tempering, but with the parts surrounded by pieces of bone, chunks of leather, etc. which burns to carbon and gives the parts a thin coat of high-carbon alloy and the characteristic rainbow colors. A cast iron receiver or one made of low-carbon steel can be color casehardened more successfully than the more conventional methods of heat treating.
Jerry

ghostsniper1

I have very little knowledge of the procedure in hardening but did something along the lines at work. I had some old worn phillips head screwdrivers which were ready for the trash, but figured I could convert them into 90degree picks for seperating heater hoses and such. I first sharpened the phillips tip to a nice sharp point via the bench grinder. I then heated the shaft of the screwdriver where I wanted the 90 degree bend with the oxy acetalyne torch and bent it in my vice. I grabbed a nice sized bucket of new motor oil and set it on my workbench before proceeding to heat the old screwdriver to a nice cherry red glow from the tip and back beyond the bend until it started to flake. I maintained it redhot as long as possible without it actually melting and then hurridly quenched it in the oil until it was cool to the touch. The scale came off nicely with the wirewheel on the benchgrinder and the pick has held up solid as a rock so far. I have been using it for over a year now without a single bend or break. Not quite what I would call proper, but it worked lol.

Teach

You did half the procedure, which ended up with a glass-hard end on the tool. If you'll buff it nice and smooth with the wire wheel and re-heat it to a light blue color for a few minutes, it will be much less likely to shatter if you get some serious pry force on it.
Jerry

ghostsniper1

I'll have to do that. Is the oxy acetylene to much or just enough?

snake284

Teach wrote: »

Update- - - - -I just got an email from Old Western Scrounger, one of the people who are selling the receivers. It's EN9 steel, which is pretty easy to heat treat, according to some research I've done on the web. Now, all I've gotta do is win the auction for a furnace/kiln that Redstone Arsenal has up for auction!

Edit: Gun Parts Co. has the receivers that take the 03 Springfield bolts, and OWS has the straight Mauser receivers, both about the same price. I've ordered one of each.
Jerry

Did I imagine this or didn't somebody come out with some new 03 actions a few years back? This is something different right?

Teach

ghostsniper1 wrote: »

I'll have to do that. Is the oxy acetylene to much or just enough?

Oxy-acetyline is good, with a slightly "carburizing" flame (just a little acetyline-rich, slightly yellow instead of bright blue). That adds a little surface carbon to the metal from the incomplete combustion of the acetyline. Don't let the metal get red, or it will anneal itself and end up soft again.
Jerry

Teach

snake284 wrote: »

Did I imagine this or didn't somebody come out with some new 03 actions a few years back? This is something different right?

These are new investment-cast receivers, similar to the way Ruger makes their rifle actions, with features of both 98 Mauser and 03 Springfield on some versions. They're surplus from the Parker-Hale factory when it went belly-up. I got one from Gun Parts Co. that's shaped to take an 03 bolt and a Mauser magazine, and another from Old Western Scrounger that's 98 Mauser all the way. They take a LOT of machine work and hand-fitting of parts. I've got the 98 Mauser receiver fitted with a bolt so far- - - -still have to thread it for a barrel and trigger guard screws, and do some other tweaking to make the magazine fit right. Then it needs to be heat-treated. I've got enough Mauser bits & pieces in the junk bin to build up most of both of them, but I had to buy a complete 03 bolt on ebay.
Jerry

Teach

I picked up the kiln/furnace today, and this cotton-pickin' thing is HUGE ! It's about twice the size of unit I thought I was bidding on, and they threw in enough molds and accessories that I could open up a ceramics shop if I wanted to. "Just haul it away- - - -it's free!" Now, anybody want to get into the ceramics business? i guess I could make a stab at putting some of the stuff on Ebay and see how much of my cost I could recoup!









The stuff was being sold by an arts & crafts hobby shop on Redstone Arsenal that is closing their ceramics department and opening up some other type of class- - - - -sewing, I believe. There are 3 or 4 other, smaller kilns still up for bid, but they're all "local pickup" items, no way to ship them. It looks like they've got several electric-powered pottery wheels that are also headed for sale soon.
Jerry