reshaping cast butt plate

[holzwurm]

I have a cast steel Hawkins butt plate that I want to reshape just a little so it will have less of a radical curve. Before I fire up my forge and start hammering I'd like to ask if I'm going to be able to move the metal at all. I've read that reshaping cast brass isn't a thing to do and I'm wondering about this steel?

[smylee grouch]

I have used those befor and simply mounted it in the vice and clamped it toe/heel and closed the vice until I had the desired shape.   

[Ky-Flinter]

Jerry,

I got a cast steel butt plate from TOW.  It had too much curve for me and it had a slight twist in it too boot.  I tried to bend it in my vise, ala smylee, but it wouldn't budge.  I got the plate red hot with an acetylene torch and she reformed very easily.

-Ron

[holzwurm]

and here are the results. I started out with a Hawkens BP like the one in the photo. I forged the shape a close as possible and there is still plenty of meat left to file away during shaping.



I dug out my old propane fired forge to do the work.  Using Oxy/Act was not working well plus the cost for acetylene has shot up since the only factory that makes it in the US blew up a few months ago. Save your acetylene for really important jobs guy's.




This works very nicely



The final resulting BP is just a bit narrower than the brass but I can live with that and do some stock shaping.

[B Shipman]

You can radically reshape cast steel  at red heat, but only slightly by cold bending. Brass  is of course, the opposite. Real brass bends easily at first. When it hardens you heat it to red heat and quench in water and it bends easily again.

[Roger Fisher]

You can radically reshape cast steel  at red heat, but only slightly by cold bending. Brass  is of course, the opposite. Real brass bends easily at first. When it hardens you heat it to red heat and quench in water and it bends easily again.

Couple rifles ago, I ran out of stock at the length of the toe and bent cold a steel butt plate; but not a ton. worked out can be done.

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

When I worked for Robinson Firearms making Hawken rifles, we never had two butt plates in a shipment that had the same curve, and definitely very few that fit the precarved stock we made.  So we bent them - usually cold, and never had one fail.