doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Case coloring small parts

How small can a part be and be case colored? I have a friend who makes pens and he is considering making a pen with a blued barrel, a case colored band and a walnut top barrel. Sounds nice, huh?

Can parts as small as the band on a pen be colored?

Best, Dick

Small parts on many fine guns were not case colored, rather were nitre blued or so called "fire" blued, same thing. I would think really small parts likely would not take a mixture or blending of colors, and would come out in a single color anyway. Also that level of heat might not be kind to parts as small as you suggest. Nitre bluing has the capability of producing a fine straw almost gold color at lower temperature levels, similar to the triggers and side plates on pristine condition original Lugar pistols. I use that to color my triggers on doubles I refinish. Suggest your friend consider nitre bluing.

I have used a propane tourch on small parts with success. Cover the resulting colors with poly spray. They are NOT tough.
bill

Case color is the by product of the case hardening process. It is used to provide a wear resistant surface to an otherwise soft steel by adding carbon.

Usually small parts are not case colored. The temps involved could cause warping.

The band on the pen does not have to be hardened. So any method of coloring the steel would be acceptable. Some liquid cold blue and a propane torch should do just fine. Just a propane torch. Some liquid plumb brown and torch. There are many variations on this. Brownells sells some Birchwood Casey touch up pens, black, green, red.

They also sell the salts for a nitre blue, which only requires heating the salt to about 550 degrees. So you could blue the barrels yourself


Pete

If you want to see what a torch can do, suggest looking at some of "master gunsmith" Ed Good's for sale "restorations" over on some of the other sights, i.e. currently the L.C. Smith BBS has severaly "great" examples with some most lucid coments! Best, Dr. BILL

I asked Doug Turnbull about case hardening the receiver on a Ruger Mark II pistol for me once, and he said the steel was too thin and would likely warp if case colored. So, on an extremely small, thin part like you're talking about, I would think you'd have problems.

DeWayne

Perhaps we can get "Master Gunsmith" Ed Lander to color them for us.

I'll advise him to try the torch method. It probably won't look too bad on a small part.

Best, Dick

Dick, your friend's project sounds interesting, however a pen's too small to get nice and different case colors on very small band. Actually the size is doesn't matter for case coloring especially when we talk not about gun parts. I'd suggest to your friend to try to case color the pen barrel and the band by nitre bluing in nice dark red or bright blue color