Gold in them thar actions?

[kBob]

In case you can not tell today was a kBob drives the school bus to Fencing and sits around thinking for three hours, so I am just full of querries.

What with all the ferrin revolvers folks have been asking about I have been wondering about tuning actions. Maybe it cost more to get a Philapino or Italian to do handwork on the small inner workings and hidden mechanisms of a gun to be imported than some think. Whatever, my understanding is the tagalog speaking revolvers are ok (lower case ok as I understand it) but hardly up to US atandards.......and affordable.

My asking about the Pietta 1955 was after ding research on last summer's posts on all the April and June info releases and folks commentary, where in folks opine that the guts of a Pietta attempt at Snake making would be less than comparable to original Python internals.

OK DOugh Key lets say they get close to say Police Positive or Official Police then on the internals. Or atleast get the basic shapes right.

I am old enough to remember when PPC was the game closest to the sort of Action/ Combat shooting popular to day. Yes, I recently got all the dinosaur meat out from between my molars. Back in the day there were a host of PPC pistol smiths around the country.....I have a S&W worked over by a minor one that is scary smooth even after the decades. These guys had all sorts of tricks, from minor polishing here and there to adding rollers and such to various parts.

I seem to recall that some one once reported great improvements with little than polishing contact points and then Gold Plating the effected parts. Apparently the hard slick surface of the 14 karat plating made things butter smooth and fooled folks into thinking pulls were less than measured.

Anyone know about plating trigger mechanisms?

-kBob

 

[Old Fuff]

Gold is relatively soft metal that would wear quickly. Back when some custom double-rifles had gold plating inside the locks, but it was intended to help prevent corrosion.

The Colt Official Police had lock work that was identical to the Python's. But the latter had a lot of additional hand fitting.

For what it's worth Pietta makes a hand-tuned/match grade copy of the Remington New Army cap & ball revolver. But by the time it reaches our shore the cost is 1000 bucks, plus.

I highly doubt they can produce a revolver that matches the Python's material specifications, finish and hand tuning for less.

On the other hand they might make one that looks like a Python.

 

[sgt127]

I've been shooting revolvers for a long time. I don't remember the gold plated action parts for a smoother trigger. That, on its face, can't work as the gold is much softer than the case hardened steel. It may work for awhile as the gold would act like a lubricant until it wears off though.

But, I've heard (and even tried) some pretty crazy stuff. Like dabbing fine Clover Compound on all the contact points and frame studs. Cycling the action a few hundred times, cleaning it all out and the gooping Gunslick on anything that moved.

The problem I have found with the import revolvers is not so much the geometry or finishing of the parts, that can be fixed, they just seemed soft to me. I had one of the Italian Colt clones and the hand deformed pretty quickly. Then it seemed the trigger sear hook started rounding out.

 

[Drail]

You are possibly thinking of gold colored titanium nitride plating on parts. It is very hard and slick. Real gold would wear away very quickly. Plain carbon steel parts properly hardened will last a very long time if kept lubed. The only advantage to plating with gold would be corrosion/oxidation resistance (like on a trigger)

 

[jdavis123]

As I recall, the idea of the gold plating was that the plating on the contact areas would wear away while filling in the imperfections in the steel. The remaining gold would be protected by the surrounding steel thus making the surface super slick.

 

[Drail]

Gold is not super slick. It is super soft and would wear away very quickly.

 

[HankB]

The problem I have found with the import revolvers is not so much the geometry or finishing of the parts, that can be fixed, they just seemed soft to me. I had one of the Italian Colt clones and the hand deformed pretty quickly. Then it seemed the trigger sear hook started rounding out.

That seems to be a problem with a lot of the cheap imports. Some years back, a bunch of CHEAP O/U shotguns were imported - I think the brand name was "Sarasketa" or something like that. The machinist in my gun club got one, and said the design was OK, but the parts were a bit rough inside. While smoothing out the burrs, he noticed the parts were rather soft, too. So . . . be dipped them in the case pot for a bit to case-harden them. They turned out just fine, so with some elbow grease and access to some resources most of us don't have, he ended up with a very serviceable gun.

 

[jdavis123]

Gold is not super slick. It is super soft and would wear away very quickly.

Derail, the gold used in the plating process isn't 24K but probably around 10K which is a harder alloy. The gold plating will fill in the imperfections on the surface of the contact points. The gold will eventually wear away as you stated but, gold will remain within the imperfections while the surrounding gold will be worn away. With the imperfections on the surface filled, the surface of the metal is now very smooth. Gold when polished is very slick. Check a piece of well polished jewelry and you will easily see what I mean. This is the theory of why gold plating was used. How well it worked is another matter.

 

[barnbwt]

Wouldn't hard chrome plating make infinitely more sense?

 

[Old Fuff]

Yes, and is often used for this purpose.

 

[Mike J]

I am not that knowledgeable about revolvers but I did recently buy a kit with polished & coated fire control parts for my AR-15. They used a nickel coating. I do not own a trigger pull gauge but the pull feels lighter & much smoother.

 

[Drail]

Nickel has a high lubricity than tool steel but is as hard. Hard chrome is even slicker and wears extremely well. Hard chrome and titanium nitride are the best materials I have ever found for plating triggers, sear and hammers.

 

[C0untZer0]

jdavis123 is right

Gold is a great lubricant, just like lead is, remember leaded gas? Gold is less toxic but a lot more expensive.

 

[Jim K]

FWIW, Sarasqueta shotguns were Spanish, some of the so-so quality guns imported from that country in the 1960's and 1970's. They generally looked good on the outside, inside not so much. Many were cottage industry products, with parts made pretty much by hand, then sent to a factory to be installed in guns.

Here is a thread with some comment:

http://www.shotgunworld.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=57429

Jim

 

[Blueduck]

Well your not the only one that heard of the "gold in the action for super smooth pull" thing (and this was well before the titanium nitride thing).

I vaguely recall looking into it many years ago. It's mentioned in passing in some very very old otherwise, respected S/W or revolver book, but for the life of me can't remember which one?? From what I found out it looked like basically an old wives tale/gunshop fable, that happened to make it's way into print somewhere without being vetted.

 

[BCRider]

As someone with a keen interest in home machining as a hobby something that comes up is the coefficient of friction between different metals and when they are used in contact with each other. It may well be that gold plating in one of the harder alloys produces a contact with a much lower coefficient of friction than what you'd have if both surfaces were steel. A perfect example which is much more common is brass bushing bearings used on steel shafts.

To see this for yourselves clean up and polish to a nice degree two pieces of steel and one of brass. With the thinnest possible smear of oil on the "base" of steel rub first the other steel item over the base and then the brass item. The brass will skid over the steel base with a lot less friction.

On the aspect of wear? If the "other" face is well polished then the gold plated items might wear. But you might be surprised at how long it takes to wear away that thin layer of plating. Particularly if the surfaces are kept free of grit and there's a little oil in there as a lubricant. Consider the situation of plain bearings in our car engines. The stuff on these shells is so soft that you could scratch and gouge it with a pencil. Yet they last for hundreds of thousands of miles of driving thanks to the proper film of oil. So any gold plating if used in the right combination of parts around it that are suitably finished and kept clean and lubricated might well last for many years.

So all in all I wouldn't say "never" and I wouldn't assume that it would be scraped down to the base metal in as short order as some of you are assuming. At least not if the entire action is doctored in the right manner.