Will case hardened surface brown well with LMF Brown?

[william cook]

My barrel on the CVA Frontier look's great as the LMF Brown did a fantastic job on it!Now,the case hardened lock plate look's a little out of place to me.Will I need to do any thing different to the surface to get it browned.Thank's,Bill.(as a side note,I am trying to get a more period looking gun and didn't know if case hardening was even done back then?)

 

[jerrywh]

Case hardening was definitely done BACK THEN. in fact all the locks back then were hardened.
It will brown but not as easy as the other metal. It will look a little different. A lot of them in the flintlock era were polished back bright. You can do this with 600 grit wet and dry. Or just steel wool it. If it is a percussion it was not uncommon to be color case hardened.

 

[william cook]

Thanks for the response,I'm still trying to decide whether to leave it as it is or brown it. Bill. :hmm:

 

[BrownBear]

It will brown but not as easy as the other metal. It will look a little different.

That's my experience, too. First time out of the block it took forever to brown and didn't look right to me. I stripped it back to bare, then browned again and all was fine. If I was to do it all again, I'd strip it right off the bat, then brown.

 

[Grizzly Adams]

If you're going to brown it, I would strip it first. Case hardening leaves the surface of the steel extremely hard and rust may not want to settle there as readily. This surface is very thin and I heard somewhere that you can remove it with blue and rust remover but I am not certain of that.

 

[BrownBear]

This surface is very thin and I heard somewhere that you can remove it with blue and rust remover but I am not certain of that.

You'll still face the problem of it being "over polished" and producing quite different results from that of the barrel, etc, prepped by sanding.

I misspoke a moment ago. I actually browned mine THREE times. Polished the lock with 800 grit for the second application, and it really looked odd next to the rest of the metal work. Went back and sanded with 320 just like the other metal, and finally got the results I wanted.

 

[Vaino]

I case harden all the screw heads, polish w/ 220 grit paper and brown.... they look same as the bbl. I would use a coarser Gesswein stone wetted w/ mineral spirits to remove the color and then brown w/ LMF. The etch from the browning will hide any imperfections.....Fred

 

[tenngun]

Just a thought. Even with brown or boiled blue and fire blued barrels locks were often 'in the white' on old guns.

 

[Col. Batguano]

Have you thought about gray as a potential color?

How about a blackened barrel instead of brown? It's easy from here. Cover your barrel in dirty motor oil and torch it, but make sure to keep the oil covering thin, or else a grain pattern from the pooled oil with start to show.