Originally Posted By: 2-piper
Quote:
you can recolor an action at the Brownells prescribed 1450F, but you run a much higher risk of warpage, and I mean much higher!

To what temp do you recommend heating? If one goes much below this 1450°F they will drop out of the critical temperature range of the steel & hardening will not take place. This would of course reduce the possibility of warpage, but would also leave the action in a near annealed state. I personally would not want to give up that hard skin on one of my guns, even for perfect colors. When steel is quenched "Suddenly" from a point above it's critical temp, there will "Always" be a risk of warpage. So far I have not been willing to take that risk, so my guns remain un-re-colored.


Gaddy's temps seem to work quite well, and produce a good hard "skin" that passes the so called file test. 1350 max, quench at a stabilized 1250 or even 1100. Even the L. C. Smith engineers letter says 1600F, but a lot of those old timers did everything by eye. For example, the Parker letter between a retired Parker employee and a Remington guy who was having troubles recreating Parker like colors says that the retired Parker employee believed that his temps were too high at 1550, but he said that the coloring at Parker was all done by eye!