aneal trigger gaurd

[Michigan Flinter]

  Last Sunday I bought a steel trigger guard at the Lapeer show .Today I started to clean it up and it is as hard as a frizzen. I can hardly get a file to scarch the surface. What is a simple way to anneal it so I can clean it up and drill a couple holes in it? It is a cast steel guard. Thanks for all your suggestions .

[Hungry Horse]

 Annealing is best done by heating to a dull red and plunging the part into a bucket of ashes, that have been warmed by putting a heated piece of scrap metal in them before the trigger guard. In about two hours it should be soft enough to file. That being said I have found cast steel parts that refuse to anneal, with anything I tried. I had a breech plug once, that couldn't be drilled or even center punched, that I never did get annealed. I think a lot of this kind of stuff happens when parts are cast out of unknown scrap.

                Hungry Horse

[Mark Elliott]

I use Perlite as my insulator to anneal steel.  You can get it in the garden supply dept of  the big box stores.    Sometimes,  it just doesn't cool the part slow enough and I have to use my heat treat oven to anneal a part, particularly a small piece of high alloy tool steel.   When I use the oven,  it is usually half a day coming up to temp and then I let it cool over night.   

[Sawatis]

When I anneal springs, frizzens and the like I build a mound with charcoal briquettes with the part on top, light it up and forget it for a day... The ash keeps the air off it and lets it cool slow.  I imagine that would work on the guard...picke that up from Frank House I think. Hope this helps
John

[David R. Pennington]

Throw it in the wood stove and dig it out tomorrow.

[Stoner creek]

Fire up the charcoal grill. Cook yourself a good cut of beef. Put your hard part in the charcoal. Enjoy your steak.

[Michigan Flinter]

 I did what Hungry Horse suggested and put the trigger guard in my friends woodstove and left it there for a few hours then took it out and put it in a pail of ashes .It is a little softer but still quite hard. Does anyone out there have anyother ideas to get it softer? Thanks for your input.

[Bob Roller]

One trick I have used is to get a bucket of dry sand and make a cavity in it deep enough to cover the part to be annealed and then heat the sand until it's too hot to handle and then heat the part to be softened to a bright red and then drop it into the hot sand and immediately cover the part and let it cool over night.
Years ago,I was told that some of these cast muzzle loader parts were cast from what was left of a ladle full of whatever the fans for jet aircraft engines are made from.I know I have had parts that couldn't be drilled including frizzens and lock plates.The plates were usually warped from the use of an air hose to eject the waxes from the die and then after being cast in this odd material,they would break when I tried straighten them.
Your trigger guard may be some kind of old stock that was done years ago.Good luck.

Bob Roller

[Mark Elliott]

Bob,

Jet fan blades are made from titanium.   It is as light as aluminum,  stronger than steel, and maintains it's integrity at high temperature.  It is also used for rocket engine nozzles.    Actually, titanium makes those engines possible.    I find it hard to believe it would have been used for muzzle loader parts.   It is very expensive and lighter than steel.   I think you would have noticed it wasn't steel.  Perhaps,  some titantium was left in the ladle when it was filled with steel and just created an unworkable alloy.   If that is what you got,  you might as well just throw it away. 

[Bob Roller]

Mark,
The incident with the lock plates was years ago.I have had problems with
cocks for the "Shoults"flintlocks but don't care if I make them or not.
What little I plan to do with flintlocks will probably be based on the three L&R
locks that work well with a bench crafted mechanism.
Our youngest son,Eric works with titanium as a quality control tech at a plant
that makes all sorts of nuts,bolts and other fasteners for aircraft and subs.
Bob Roller

[Long John]

Get a good fire going in the fireplace.  Toss it in.  Pull it out of the ashes tomorrow.  Always works for me.

JMC

[JCKelly]

The steel you get in an investment casting may not be what you ordered. Can depend upon just what alloy was melted in the pot before they melted the 4140 or whatever.

Anyway, you might have what is essentially a tool steel, that requires either hotter anneal temp than that wood stove, or slower cooling.

I'd build me a hot fire in whatever place you have, blowing a little air in would help. That metal has to get hot enough to glow, red would be good, bright red maybe better.
Then cool it by just letting the fire die down slowly, maybe bank it.
After it is cool enough to touch - like the next day -dig it out of the ashes.

Or ask Anson what he would do with it.

Jim Kelly the P-I-T-A metallurgist
 

[T*O*F]

In the past I have gotten steel castings that seemed to have a "skin" on them.  Perhaps they somehow got case hardened.  Trying to anneal them met with little success.  However, I found if a put a sanding drum on a Dremel tool and worked the surface of the part, it could then be filed and sanded.