Iron & Steel

[Capt, Woodrow F. Call]

Howdy.

Do anyone now what kind of iron or steel product's Uberti use in production of westernwepons.

Seem's to me that the barrel and cylinder is softer then the frame, it is more easy to get some cut's and more in the barrel and cylinders.



Call.

[Coffinmaker]

Ordinance steel.  Since it's Italian I doubt you can assign a specific number or alloy.  Frames are normally Case Hardened but the same steel as used in the barrel and cylinder.  The steel used for C & B however, is softer than that used in the Smokeless guns.

Coffinmaker

[Bugscuffle]

Firstly, case hardening only "hardens" the surface of the piece. It is used today more for cosmetics thtn for actual hardening. Secondly, the quality of the steel is more dependant on the alloy or what other metals, nickle, titanium, cobalt, etc. are added to the mixture when smelting. Thirdly, iron is the base element from which steel is made. Iron is made into steel by adding carbon at a molecular level to the iron, The steel is then further enhanced by the addition of other elements, mostly metals, that make it harder, stronger more brittle, less brittle, etc. Specific alloys are used in some applications. you probably wouldn't use ordanance steel to make the hood of a Ford pickup truck. The elements added to it and the difficulty in producing that alloy would make it cost prohibitive. Then again you wouldn't want to use the steel used to make nails to produce drill bits either, although I have gotten a few of those from Harbor Freight.

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[Capt, Woodrow F. Call]

Thank's.

After i have see'n in the video from Uberti, it looks like the frame is made by cast iron i belive    but the barrel and cylinder, is
prob soft macine steel/iron type

I found this from Uberti:

[Pettifogger]

Thank's.

After i have see'n in the video from Uberti, it looks like the frame is made by cast iron i belive    but the barrel and cylinder, is
prob soft macine steel/iron type

I found this from Uberti:

How on earth could you make that conclusion if you watched the video?  The very first scene clearly shows that the frame is forged, not cast.  The frame is NOT cast iron.

[Riot Earp]

Whatever it is (for the cap & ball guns), it's insanely soft. 

I have seen brand new cap & ball Ubertis in gun stores with grooves in their cylinders. Not lines, but GROOVES.

[Capt, Woodrow F. Call]

How on earth could you make that conclusion if you watched the video?  The very first scene clearly shows that the frame is forged, not cast.  The frame is NOT cast iron.

Thank you for your answer sir

First: I don't now much about cast iron,
Second: But i now some about forged steel and iron, becouse one of my interest is blacksmith'ing.
I have seen cast iron have been make in big and small block's, end then it has been cut up in smaller block's, and been warmed up again ( not liquid metal) so they can produce some tool's & carparts & more......
That's way i wondering about the frame in Uberti's wepons.

It was just one question about what kind of metal they use.
 

[Bugscuffle]

The reason that iron is "cast" or molded is that it is not maleable enough to be forged. Iron would just break up or crack under a blacksmith's hammer. The invention that made steel available in mass quantities back in the day was the Bessemer furnace. It smelted the ore and produced iron in the first phase of production and then oxygen was perculated through the molten iron through ports inthe bottomof the furnace. This caused the impurities and sometimes additives to be burned into carbon, thus adding the carbon to the mixture, making steel. That is the very dramatic picture that you get from steel manucaturers with a huge fountain of fire and sparks shooting out of the top of the furnace. It's the oxygen being pumped through the molten iron that makes all the fireworks.

[Paladin UK]

Fer RE....

Whatever it is (for the cap & ball guns), it's insanely soft. 
I have seen brand new cap & ball Ubertis in gun stores with grooves in their cylinders. Not lines, but GROOVES.

I got a crater in my Uberti Cylinder from just One Hit of the bolt !!

Paladin (What agrees with Riot  ) UK

[Delmonico]

When you say iron with out saying cast iron it is most often assumed you are talking about fairly pure iron with less than 0.2% carbon, steel contains 0.2% to 2.1% carbon and cast iron has 2.2%-4.0% carbon.   

[Pettifogger]

Fer RE....

I got a crater in my Uberti Cylinder from just One Hit of the bolt !!

Paladin (What agrees with Riot  ) UK

That's why I try to get them and tune them before they have even been cocked the first time.  The frames and hammers are case hardened and are fairly hard on the surface.  The barrels and cylinders are made from good steel, but they are not heat treated.  I have a few friends that took their 1860 Army cylinders to a local heat treater and had them heat treated.  They are over ten years old, have thousands of rounds through them and are still in excellent shape.  The only problem is that doing just a couple of cylinders in a special run costs more than the guns did.  I have some untreated cylinders that came from guns with bad timing that were junk in 500 rounds.  I asked Alessandro Pietta if they could heat treat some cylinders for me or would it be cost prohibitive.  He thought about it a while and asked if there was a Cabelas near my house.  Turns out the "in the white" guns like their .44 Sheriffs model are heat treated.  So when you look at the Cabellas website and see that the in the white guns are almost twice the price of a blued gun it's not because of the cast in engraving, it is because of the heat treating.  All of the cartridge guns are, of course, heat treated as they have to be proofed for smokeless powder.

[Abilene]

Hmm, those little sheriff's models are looking more attractive all the time 

[Riot Earp]

Fer RE....

I got a crater in my Uberti Cylinder from just One Hit of the bolt !!

Paladin (What agrees with Riot   ) UK

So did I. On my first Uberti Remington. Pietta has its own quality issues, but their Remington cylinders seem a tad  harder.

[jplower]

This really makes the case for buying a geuine Colt, as they heat treat the barrels and cylinders.  I have the specs for the cylinders right from the factory and I can assure you that they are heat treated.  You DO get what you pay for.

JP

[Riot Earp]

Unfortunately, Remington cap & ball shooters can't go that route.  But they can buy a (pre-hardened) conversion cylinder.  

[Capt, Woodrow F. Call]

This really makes the case for buying a geuine Colt, as they heat treat the barrels and cylinders.  I have the specs for the cylinders right from the factory and I can assure you that they are heat treated.  You DO get what you pay for.

JP

Uberti or Geuine Colt, i have both, somehow the Colt look's and feel much better than Uberti, but both of them shoot's real good and fine to operate. Mabye it is some magic over a geuine Colt...i don't now
Isn't Uberti wepons made after blueprint from Colt factory, and use the same metal as geuine Colt or do they have there own close copy and metal.

[Driftwood Johnson]

Howdy

As usual, Pettifogger is right on the money when he talks about heat treating. It is heat treatment that makes most of the difference when talking about the strength of a cylinder.

This really makes the case for buying a geuine Colt, as they heat treat the barrels and cylinders.  I have the specs for the cylinders right from the factory and I can assure you that they are heat treated.  You DO get what you pay for.

JP, are you sure Colt is heat treating their barrels? I kind of doubt it. With a revolver, the cylinder is the pressure vessel that is most likely to fail if there is an over pressure event. The thickness of a barrel wall makes it much stronger than a chamber wall and heat treating a barrel is not necessary. Most revolver failures involve the cylinder bursting, it is quite rare that a barrel bursts. Heat treating a cylinder is very important to insure the strength of the cylinder when fired with modern Smokeless Powder loads.


*****


Don't sell iron short as a metal used in the manufacture of firearms. Also, don't confuse cast iron with malleable or wrought iron. Cast iron is full of impurities, and is therefor of little use in firearms manufacture. Cast iron is fine in compression, and was used as a building material through out the 19th Century, but it is a poor choice for applications that will put it in tension or shear. Malleable iron, on the other hand is quite strong and took the pressure of Black Powder firearms for centuries. The Springfield Armory cranked out many thousands of muskets for the Civil War, and they all had iron barrels. Malleable iron is purer than cast iron, most of the impurities, including carbon have been driven out, and it can be formed by forging. The Village Blacksmith with his forge and his hammer was working with malleable, or wrought iron, not cast iron.

Most of the percussion revolvers had malleable iron cylinders and frames. Up until about 1883 the Colt Single Action Army had cylinders and frames made from malleable iron. After that, low carbon steels were used, and by 1900 Colt had perfected heat treating medium carbon steel frames and cylinders enough that they felt confident factory warrantying the SAA to be used with Smokeless Powder.

Although steel has been produced for over 1000 years, it was only available in small quantities and was expensive to produce. The Bessemer process, developed in 1858, made mass production of inexpensive steel possible. The Bessemer process started with pig iron (cast iron). The iron was heated in a converter with great quantities of air pumped through the melt. The oxygen in the air combined with impurities in the iron, including carbon, driving all the impurities out of the melt. Then a controlled amount of carbon was reintroduced to the melt to create steel. But steel made by the Bessemer process tended to include small bubbles and cavities as a result of the turbulence created when the air was pumped through the converter. It was not until about 1874 that Sir Joseph Whitworth developed his method of producing steel ingots under hydraulic pressure. The pressure compressed and eliminated the porosity that had plagued early Bessemer steel. Whitworth was the same man who developed the Whitworth rifle with its polygonal bore. His hydraulic pressure method of making steel went by several names, Whitworth steel and it was also called Fluid Steel because of the hydraulic connection.

I do not know this for certain, but I suspect it was the development of the Whitworth process that finally convinced Colt to produce the SAA with steel cylinders and frames.

Modern standards for steel are international, Italian gunmakers use the same standard steels as anyplace else in the world. Many modern firearms manufacturers use 4041 steel for high strength applications like cylinders.

http://www.simplytoolsteel.com/4140-alloy-steel-data-sheet.html

But trying to pin down a manufacturer as to exactly what steel alloy they use is probably not going to be successful. Most will treat that as proprietary information and will not divulge exactly what alloy they use. I once called up Ruger and asked what Stainless Steel alloy they use. They would not tell me.

But the bottom line for strength with any modern oil hardening steel will be to heat treat it.

[Flint]

I believe Winchester lever gun frames were also wrought or malleable iron.

[Capt, Woodrow F. Call]

I believe Winchester lever gun frames were also wrought or malleable iron.

Howdy.  I don't now about Winchester Repeting Arms, but the orginal Colt production, i read in the book of Colt and London agecy, that the iron they use to make colt peacemaker of in 1873, was not from the US, but from Germany and Britania, the iron in US was not that good, so they have to import it.   
But it is weard that it is so much bobbles and crater in Uberti's wepons to day.  

[Cliff Fendley]

How do you heat treat a cylinder if you don't know what steel it is? Without knowing the specifics you are guessing at an austenitizing temperature, time, and quench method.