Durability of Turnbull case coloring

For those of you with guns that have had Turnbull CC, can you comment on how durable the finish is? I've heard that after the protective lacquer coating comes off the coloring is not very deep into the metal (vs the CC of others) and can wear off quickly.

I'm curious in particular to hear from those who actually use their guns a fair amount and subject them to wear.

I have a Turnbull case colored lock (flintlock) on my hunting rifle. This lock is not lacquered and has been cleaned with stiff nylon brushes many, many times. The case colors are still there.

UV radiation is what really hammers case coloring; I don't know of anyway to prevent it other than keeping it in the safe, which for me @ least isn't an option.

Color case hardening is a surface finish the same as blueing. As such it is subject to wear. Lacquer applied to the finish would be subject to thinning and removal by the solvents used to clean the gun. Defeating the purpose of using it.

There are two companies in this country who are considered to do the finest color case hardening and since the other is Colt, I'd say that Turnbull's finish won't give you any trouble.

Thanks guys. Yeah, I would think that if Turnbull wasn't turning out high quality work you wouldn't hear people recommending them all the time. I still would like to hear from somebody who has a recent Turnbull piece with the lacquering applied who has used their gun hard.

Turnbull Manuf. is 15 miles down the road from me. I get to see a lot of Doug's work. It's all beautiful. Their production guns, gun smithing, engraving, metal finishing and wood working are all top notch.

If there is someone doing better or more durable case-hardening out there I'd love to see it.

I have, and just this morning shot at the range, a 24-5 that Turnbull did the color case on. Have had, and shot it for years. Clean it with solvents like any other gun I have (care here for nickel). Looks as good as the day I got it years ago. Just took pictures before I clean it after great performance this morning. I love my .44 Specials.

The colors of color case hardening are not particularly durable. I've have a few dozen guns color case hardened by Doug Turnbull over the past 30+ years. Below is a photo of my own custom Fox shotgun after Turnbull color case hardening and 20+ years of shooting, hunting and handling.
You can see how the rust bluing has worn from the trigger guard tang, nitre bluing disappeared from the trigger guard screws and three stages of color case hardening wear. 1. Nice bright colors in protected areas 2. Lacquer coating worn off and 3. Case colors gone to leave a grey surface. Contrary to some opinions, UV or natural light does not deteriorate case colors. As an experiment the forend iron, just in front of the action was not coated with lacquer turned grey relatively quickly with handling and shooting.

It is important to remember that the hardening doesn't wear off an provides some corrosion resistance and a hard surface for the moving internal parts.
The reason for use on S&Ws was to harden the sear surfaces and provide slick surfaces for the moving parts.
This is typical of all bone charcoal (pack) color case hardening.


This is a new S&W Target hammer


And this is a freshly color case hardened Hagn action for one of my custom rifle projects.

I had Turnbull do a rifle receiver and rings for me four years ago and have hunted with this gun in all kinds of weather. The clear lacquer appears to still be there and the rifle looks as good as the day I got it back from him. If sun fades the colors I haven't noticed, but I suspect constant handling may be a problem over time.

"It is important to remember that the hardening doesn't wear off an provides some corrosion resistance and a hard surface ..."
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Mr. Hughes, when you're working on a gun whose exterior has been casehardened at some point, do you have to anneal the metal before you can do any filing?

Either anneal or polish it off with abrasives depending on the project. Sometimes annealing doesn't work so well because the carbon is saturated into the surface and that is what makes it hard. I usually try to draw the hardness, then start polishing with 100 grit.
Steve

I've never bought into the sun fading of case colors, but many do, keep 'em stored out of the direct sun if it it seems to be a valid point to you.
Simple wear from handling is what takes the color off. The color itself is only microns thick (if micron is a real measurement). The hardeness,,the real reason for the process will be anywhere from near nothing to a few .000". Wearing away the colors leaves the hardness in the surface.
The harder surface is what many times makes the handled and polished up surface appear nickle plated. Harder metal takes a brighter polish.

Durability can vary. Some parts (were)are casecolored intentionally with no surface hardness. Cosmetic color on the surface only. Warpage is a greater factor when the hardening temps are introduced.
Those soft colored parts will wear their colors off very quickly from my experience.

Sometimes as quick as during re-assembly of the guns especially if you have some problem and have to dis-assemble and reassemble a couple of time toget a single trigger of ejector to work.
Kind of a nice gently used but not abused look to them,,but the customers were certainly not wanting that (not all of them anyway).

Others were much more durable,,and hard like they should be.

A coating was nothing more than (orange) shellac) then.
Everything that was case colored that was coated, was coated with that. Some jobs/restorations were not coated.
We applied a thinned coating quickly by hand with medical cotton swabs. That was it. The orange shellac enhances the colors a bit over white shellac.
I think LC Smith and some others used it originally. Cheap, dries quick, looks good.

But lots of different clear coatings are used now and some are bake on type and are very tough.
These can also be very tough to re-move the remnants of (as opposed to shellac or laquers) when time comes to re-coat the metal as the coatings wear,,,and they will.


Take your pick,,or leave the surface uncoated. Some older mfg's coated their C/C frames,,some did not. On a custom you do what you want of course.
But case colors them selves are not a very durable finish or coating. There just plain isn't much of anything there.

Re-fitting after hardening can be nothing to do or some bending of metal.
Hopefully not the latter too much as there is a limit to what you can do to C/hardened steel. If you guess wrong, you probably know what happens. But you can bend parts to a degree. It takes some experience like everything else to know what you can and cannot do or attempt.
Better to anneal and refit and re-color than to crack the part.

Most of the purveyors have it pretty well under control but it still happens. It takes some confidence to wedge open the wall of a freshly casecolor hardened 86 frame so the bolt will fit back into the rails. Better the condition doesn't happen in the first place.

The toughest case colors as far as wear resistance that
I think I've seen were those done by Don Menk when he ran Case Color Co. in Ohio.
He's retired & out of business now. Ran one 'style' of color or pattern if you want to call it that. But they wore very well and he gave good metal hardness depth.

Ruger's case colors are just a finish appearance of case hardening. I have a pair of Vaqueros, that I bought used and have done Cowboy action shooting for 12 or 13 years. They have been in bright sun and soaking rain several times. I usually shoot smokeless powder, but have used Black Powder several times and the cleaning that requires and the fake colors still look good. Good color work will last with reasonable care. I have a 1956 Sauer SxS and the case colors were laquared and still look fine. Ivan

I called Turnbull and spoke with one of the workers, concerning cc care. They use and recomend the product G96, clp Gun Oil. I tryed ot and like it very much. Sonora

SDH - I am a little confused by a couple of your statements.

The colors of color case hardening are not particularly durable . . . It is important to remember that the hardening doesn't wear off an provides some corrosion resistance and a hard surface for the moving internal parts.

I think case hardening is pretty much the same as general hardening and I had the understanding that both are surface treatments. Before the turn of the century I believe most all case coloring was a result of treating the metal and the color was just a by-product of metal hardening. Of course, today, it seems to be used more about eye-appeal than practical use.

I do work on many antique shotguns and can certainly attest to the fact that both can wear off over time. It may have taken over 100 years to do so, but it does happen. Of course, I have some 140 year old doubles that still have bright original case coloring. It is all a matter of how much the gun was used, plus how well it was cared for.

If you do a web search for "Dr. Oscar Gaddy" you'll find a couple of articles he did on color case hardening for Double Gun Journal. I believe he was a chemist. At any rate he did experiments with CC hardening and the articles are fairly technical but plainly written enough for anyone to understand. Very interesting.

Part of his experimentation included the effects of UV and other wavelengths of light and he concluded that they had no effect on case colors. But the colors are thin, thinner and more delicate than bluing, and are removed fairly quickly mechanically by handling. As you can see on SDH's lovely Fox, the colors in areas protected from handling are in good shape, having been exposed to the same light as the areas that are faded from handling.

So the best way to protect CC would be some sort of coating, from wax on the low end to something like lacquer or varnish or a bake on like 2152hq pointed out.

I for one don't mine the worn in look. The wear pattern on my most used shotgun is very much like SDH's. The shotgun however ain't quite like his...dang, what a shotgun.

Gary,
Case hardening is only skin deep, to understand read 2152hq's post.

Through hardening of carbon steel requires heating to the critical temp and quenching making it glass hard all the way through. The hard steel must the be tempered by heating to a given temp for use as springs, tools or files. The higher the temp the softer the tempered steel.
Lots of explanations available, most probably better than mine. I teach all of this including tool making in my custom gun seminars.

Thanks for the kind words Cooter. That Fox has been dripping wet in Oregon grouse hunting, baked dry in Texas quail hunting, up and down chukar scree in Idaho, killed a passel of pheasants in SoDak, along with sharptail huns and a turkey in MT.
It has provided me with a real world education on the durability of wood and metal finished… and Fox shotguns.
Best, Steve
Out shooting clays with some other interesting double guns with similar CCH wear patterns.

Thanks for the clarification Steve. Like your doubles, as I have the same passion. Love restoring vintage American and English Doubles and enjoy shooting every one I own. I have used Gady's slow rust process to restore Damascus patterns on the old doubles, but would never try his case hardening process. Just too much to go wrong and I do not want to warp anything.

Ivan the Butcher said:

Ruger's case colors are just a finish appearance of case hardening. ..... I usually shoot smokeless powder, but have used Black Powder several times and the cleaning that requires and the fake colors still look good. Good color work will last with reasonable care. ..... Ivan

Click to expand...

The Parker 'Repro' shotguns are another that used some sort of propietary surface chemical(sp?) coloring to simulate case coloring,,and it wore very quickly on most of those guns with little use.
They re-case color nicely though w/the bone/charcoal method and can be made to look like the original Meriden production guns colors.

Remington production Parkers and Remington small parts on some of their rifles were done with cyanide.
The same style process that AH Fox used after about 1918 or so..(early guns are bone/charcoal C/C/Hardened).
I think the original heat treat company, Fred Heinzlemann (sp?) in NJ that used to do the AH Fox cyanide hardening for them is still in business and still will accept firearms frames for (cyanide) color hardening. At least they did up to a couple years back.
Some of those minty condition elderly high grade/upgrade Fox guns may have seen a more recent trip back to Fred's place for a spa treatment.

Cyanide colors seem to wear a little better than bone/charcoal colors, at least to me they do.
But most people prefer the look of the latter. At least when given the choice betw the two in the randon style pattern in a side by side comparison.

A most enjoyable and informative thread. Thank you gentlemen for taking the time.