Long Land "Bess" springs

[smoothbore69]

Hello,
I have a TRS Long Land musket. I bought some spare lock springs and need to fins someone who would be willing to heat treat these for me. I have never even attempted to finish springs and want to have them done right. Any help is appreciated.

Chris Quattlebaum

 

[Zonie]

Are you sure they need to be heat treated?

Most of the springs I've bought from suppliers are already hardened and tempered, even the cast ones.

If I were in your shoes I would try to find out if they are at all hard before I would think of trying to get them heat treated.

To do this, I would look for a place that could be filed without damaging the spring.
Then using a new or fairly new fine toothed flat file I would try to file the spring parallel to the long direction of one of its leaves.

If the file bit in and removed material easily I would know that the spring was still "soft".
If the file lightly removed some of the "high points" but did not really bite into the metal I would figure that the spring was fully heat treated.

Putting it another way, a good flat file is very hard while a hardened and tempered spring is hard but not as hard as a file. Unheatreated steel is fairly soft and easily cut with a file.

 

[fitter]

TRS springs are as cast. have to be filed, polished and hardened and tempered.

 

[LRB]

Fitter is right. I looked them up. TRS wants $18.95 for them as cast. You'd think for that price they would be heat treated, but not so.

 

[Zonie]

Well, I would think that if they haven't hardened them they would at least send along some instructions on the temperatures and processes (like oil quench or water quench), or give the buyer information about the type of material the springs are made from?

Perhaps they do. I googled for information but couldn't find it.

Anyway, if I were to try hardening the springs, especially the mainspring I would use oil quenching but even this milder method could cause cracks if everything wasn't done exactly right.
Then again, I don't have a temperature controlled furnace which should be used to heat the spring so I'll just have to wish C. Quattlebaum good luck.

 

[LRB]

They give the steel type and instructions in the catalog Zonie, but they recommend water quench, which I would NOT do. They also tell you to temper by color with a torch, which is less than ideal. These springs are cast 6150 chrome vanadium steel. They really should be oven processed for maximum quality. I also looked for info on the net, but did not find any reliable info on the temper heat. Apparently it is 750°, but I would like to see more info on that before I did it.