Greetings all,
I am the current custodian of a Stephen Grant sidelock, sidelever with the Grant patent ejectors and have fallen victim to the delicacy of this design.
The left ejector tripper, which is located adjacent to the cocking lever in the action, has broken.
Can I make this part with a piece of 1018 sheet metal? The tripper is about .040" in thickness, so 18ga would do with a bit of thinning.
My main question is whether or not the 1018 would be durable enough without further heat treatment.
Below is a picture of the ejector tripper (Top) and cocking lever (Bottom).
Those of you familiar with the design will know what's going on...
Your going to be better off with a piece of O1 tool steel properly hardened and tempered.
Steve
Your best bet is to use a piece of gauge plate of the correct thickness then harden it failing that a piece of machine hack saw blade though it will need to be annealed then hardened again. Going down in hardness and just still workable as is with hand tools is a DIY type circular saw blades, a lot of these blades are made from high carbon steel and can be heat treatable. I do find circular saw blade material very usable rather than paying a high price for a couple of inches of gauge plate etc.
Thanks for the info. I am by no means an expert in metals but now can see that I need a steel that has a higher carbon content. As I would like to try and tackle this job myself using only hand tools, I like the idea of a hacksaw blade. I may be able to track down a blade from a reciprocating saw which is large enough to make the part from.
Failing that, I can certainly find a circular saw blade which is large enough. My concern with this would be getting the thickness correct since it would have to be thinned quite a bit and I only have files to do so.
I will post back once I find some blades. I'm sure I will need some hand-holding for the heat treatment...
Dear Blue Grouse;
Please allow an old man nearly 80 to provide you with some advice on the selection of the steel (which should be spring steel or something that can be hardened) basis to to use to minimize the forming of the part work.
Measure the thickness of the steel with precision( I have found in Stephen Grant ejectors trippers that they are not uniform thickness front to rear) then drive over to the home supply store or second hand tool store and measure the thickness of the cheap carpenter hand saws (I have bought them for $5.00 or so in the past) finding one that meets your thickness needs. Even the cheap saws are made of good spring steel--especially the cheap Buck brand. This will save you a lot of filing work. While you are there buy a round chain saw file for the rounding of the edge of the slot you are going to make.
Bushveld,
Thank you very much for the advice.
The carpenter saw idea is perhaps even better since it would require even less finishing if I can find the proper thickness.
Indeed you are correct about the thickness of the tripper. Mine varies from .031" at the end which protrudes from the action knuckle, to .040" at the opposite end where the spring is located.
I already have a chain saw file which I use for removing material on the lumps when re-jointing but it may be too large a diameter...
Every bit of information brings me closer to a solution!
If you are thinking about using the chainsaw file to form the round in the depth of the slot? You could consider just drilling the closest sized hole there on a drill press. Then form the rest of the slot with what ever hacksaw, flat filing that would get you there. Maybe leave a little extra for work holding, that piece may be frustrating with a lot of vibration if using hand tools.
The others that commented would know much better, but I’d drill the stop hole, hog it out with a disk dremel type tool, then just clean up the relatively lesser roughness. And, I’m sorry if I’m not understanding what you’re trying to do. Best of luck with it.
If you can tig or solder your part back together so you have a good pattern to work from also drill the hole first then use it to indicate your pattern
I would recommend spring steel .
Gunman, Do you think that using a saw blade of suitable thickness would work?
I have measured all my saws and all are too thin. I will be off to the hardware store with my calipers next too see if I can find a suitable donor.
If you'd generally want to get an idea of what you're looking for, you might look up "blue tempered steel". I think .040 might be a tad thick for regular hand saws, but look them over if you're buying a new saw for the steel. It may say things like impulse hardened, which may turn out to mean the body of the saw, where you may cut out your part, is not what you're hoping for.
I'm not sure why you do not buy a piece of tool steel thick enough for your needs. Gunman suggested spring steel, as did I (1095). Knife makers supply, ebay, tons of suppliers online and then you know what you have and how to harden and temper it.
Have a pole pruning saw blade that is .05", have used for springs. Anneal, shape, re-heat treat
Get a hand saw blade, most likely carbon steel. Others may be high-speed steel.
Chuck
My first instinct is to advise the OP to give this job to someone who understands what grade of steel to use, and how to properly heat treat it.
A beginner determined to make a spring is probably better off buying a piece of annealed high carbon spring steel, and concentrating on correctly shaping it. Correct hardening and tempering will be another educational experience.
Anyone who plans on working on guns as a hobby would do well to latch onto every piece of spring steel they can save. I have a nice selection of new annealed spring steel and quite a variety of flat springs from various sources. Old clocks are a good source of thinner and narrower spring steel. A return spring from a broken tape measure was recently found to be a perfect thickness for a Lefever cocking indicator spring. Recoil starter springs from small engines are a bit thicker. Brush-holder springs from old DC motors are another source for thin stuff. Hand saw blades, as mentioned, are usually high carbon steel, but a lot of the thicker powered hacksaw blades are alloys that can be more difficult to heat treat. The flat springs from animal traps are another common source. The springs from scrap cable retrievers supply a lot of quality material too. Automotive leaf springs used to be mainly carbon steel, but newer cars and trucks utilize a lot of different alloys.
The trick to using all of this readily available supply of free or very reasonably priced spring stock is properly annealing it without excessive scale formation. When a furnace is not available, you can do a good job by putting your pieces of hardened spring stock in a short length of threaded and capped black pipe with a small vent hole. Put some brown paper bag inside to consume the oxygen when it ignites, and bury it in a pile of hot coals from a large wood fire. After 18 to 24 hours, the coals slowly die out and cool naturally. Long heating to a dull red color, in an oxygen free atmosphere, with very gradual cooling, is the key to annealing. The steel will be dead soft, and virtually free of scale.
O.K. Points taken and thanks for the input.
As I said, I am no expert in metallurgy but learning more every day. I was hoping to circumvent the heat treating step, which is why I hoped that a saw blade would suffice.
Now I see that I must know what type of steel that I'm dealing with in the first place. I will try to source some 01 tool steel in a close enough thickness.
I have much experience sending my English guns out to proper "English gunsmiths" here in Canada and my guns generally disappear for a year, or two or three...
Thus my determination to try this myself.
Question - Must I anneal the 01 tool steel first or is it possible to work with a file and heat treat later?
If its hardened, you shouldn't be able to file it at all really.
But you can buy the steel already in a normalized/annealed state. Then just harden and temper once you're to shape
To Keith's point, One other thought: consider sending the piece off to be heat treated professionally: i recently used Peters Hear Treating service. They were fast, have verified hardness testing, and cost about $20 for the knife I was doing (which was D2 tool steel)
If you want to do the treatment yourself, just be sure to pick a steel that is known for ease of treatment (liked 1095. Not like D2, which requires a 30 minute soak at 1850f inside an oxygen free environment...)
O1 is tricky to make a spring from, 1095 or 1075 will be much more forgiving. Buying it in the annealed state will be much easier for you.
I'd agree to try to steer clear of O1. It's often mentioned to treat it like a simple steel, but decent heat treating is relatively complicated. It has enough alloy in it that even careless drilling can spot air harden it and wreck a bit.
The thought I had about 'blue temper steel', and it should be confirmed, is because it is generally 1095 that has been tempered back to the low fifties (rockwell C), right about spring temper. It'll feel tougher than annealed steel, but it can definitely worked with regular home tools. Careful with creating too much heat while working it, maybe hold it with bare fingers and dip cool it as needed.
Another place you might be able find decent quality steel, that has known roughly spring temper heat treatment, is at a woodworking store. A plain flat cabinet scraper might also pick up a bit of thickness that full depth heat treated (not just the teeth) saws don't quite have. In garage sales and pawn shops, they're thrown in every now and then with screw drivers and old files. I think jump in, you can always send the gun out later if it doesn't work and you aren't altering either the broken part or some other part of the gun.
edit to add, 1075, 1080/84, 1095 are easy to come by annealed and would work with the heat to red and dump in old motor oil method, then maybe do one of the anecdotal oil burn off v-spring tempers? Best of luck.
The black art of changing a metals characteristics is an art but in days past it was known to a few hence the name Blacksmith but you dont have to be a full time practitioner of the black art to do it on a small scale at home. Looking back at the number of times that needed to use high Carbon steel to make parts was very minimal though it was good to know how it was done, usually the steel I used was a piece of second hand scrap and usually in the hardened state, and of course the part was needed yesterday to no chance of the luxury of purchasing new and in an anniellid state.
So lets do it is not Rocket science.
1) to soften a piece of hardened high carbon steel such as a chisel, old filed saw blades, etc. A gas blow torch capable to heat the price of metal red hot, A little luxury a box of dry sand. To soften the steel from its hardened state you heat it to cherry red and let it cool down slowly, if you bury it in dry sand it will cool slowly failing that just apply some heat now and again to stop the metal cooling down to quickly. If normal high carbon steel it will be soft enough to work with hand tools.
2) Now to harden the steel we heat it to cherry red and keep there for about a minute, then plunge quickly quench into oil or water my prefeed method is having a tin box with about six inches of water and two inches of oil floating on the tot, lets just say the best of both worlds.
Annealing to the required hardness because the steel you have now is glass hard and if you struck it with a hammer it would shatter. To make the steel usable we have to adjust its hardness for what is required of the steel to do. This is accomplished by heating the steel again to the annealing temperature required. For a DIY person watching the oxide colours change with temperature on the steel you are heating after polishing some of the surface rather than an expensive annealing oven.
In the photograph is a photograph of the oxide colours used for differing uses you will see as you heat the metal to anneal it, to fix the temperature you can plunge the metal into cold water.
it all sounds complicated but from start to finish about five minutes. Give it a try, it really is simple and I will say one of the best pieces of information I ever learned during my apprenticeship.
Thanks for the replies, much appreciated.
I have found a source for 1095, 1/16 thick x 1.5" wide and annealed, $9.00 for a foot and $19.00 for the shipping!
Will report back when I get it and shape it.
1075 is much better on the temper side 1095 can be brittle longer I.e. it takes longer to draw the temper