To encounter hobbyists brought to tears by "pot metal," look outside of firearms to the model train folks. While antique car buffs and old-radio fans can often fake it with modern plastic reproductions of the old castings, old model trains are either original or worthless -- or sadly in-between. The cheaper and older white casting metals aren't chemically stable and corrode in unpredicable ways, often swelling and distorting or cracking long before falling to chunks and dust. Most any model-train guy has one or more tales of woe about old engines that are found intact, only to go to bits soon after. That kind of "pot metal," you won't find in any gun that is safe to fire.
Me, all I have to fret over are some interesting old radio-type parts made of pot metal. (Some of them heartbreakingly so. Anybody know a good brass founder open to one-off custom work?) All my old guns are made of steel. Even the very old Spanish .25.
Cast parts of any metal used in guns get a poor rap compared to machined parts for a very simple reason: it is easy to cast parts with built-in stresses and weak points, especially complex parts. Starting oversize and milling (etc.) them down to finished dimensions or just gnawing the part out of a single billet of metal generally results in a part less likely to fail from cast-in flaws. Chewing away at a lump of metal with big power tools usually finds the flaws in it the hard way. ("Eye Protection Required!")
In recent years, it has become easier to cast dependable parts and simpler to check them, too. This has resulted in greater use of such parts and of parts formed in other low-waste ways, like "sintering," about which I know only the vaguest bits. If a manufacturer spends less time and tool-wear on generating great piles of metal chips, costs drop; so price can drop and profits can increase. Simple as that, if dependability doesn't suffer from use of the new methods.
Early on, it did. I've seen a spongy cast safety on a big-name 1911 just fall apart under normal use like it was pasteboard. But that's pretty uncommon nowadays.
--Herself
Me, all I have to fret over are some interesting old radio-type parts made of pot metal. (Some of them heartbreakingly so. Anybody know a good brass founder open to one-off custom work?) All my old guns are made of steel. Even the very old Spanish .25.
Cast parts of any metal used in guns get a poor rap compared to machined parts for a very simple reason: it is easy to cast parts with built-in stresses and weak points, especially complex parts. Starting oversize and milling (etc.) them down to finished dimensions or just gnawing the part out of a single billet of metal generally results in a part less likely to fail from cast-in flaws. Chewing away at a lump of metal with big power tools usually finds the flaws in it the hard way. ("Eye Protection Required!")
In recent years, it has become easier to cast dependable parts and simpler to check them, too. This has resulted in greater use of such parts and of parts formed in other low-waste ways, like "sintering," about which I know only the vaguest bits. If a manufacturer spends less time and tool-wear on generating great piles of metal chips, costs drop; so price can drop and profits can increase. Simple as that, if dependability doesn't suffer from use of the new methods.
Early on, it did. I've seen a spongy cast safety on a big-name 1911 just fall apart under normal use like it was pasteboard. But that's pretty uncommon nowadays.
--Herself
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