Frame casting definitely needs heat treated; some of the blocks were hardened, need to check it to be sure.  These are pretty easy to complete if it's a leftover from the company going out of business.  The castings that Tom Ondrus did later to sell with his stock of internal parts will take a bit more work, but still quite doable.

Thanks for the replies guys. The casting is definitely still rough. Where/who should I send this to to be heat treated?  I'd thought about a heavy barrel 22-250 ackley.  Not 100% maybe a 6mm remington. Any idea what the castings are cast from? Guessing a guy wants to machine/polish before heat treating. Thanks again guys

Looking at the internal parts there's a little bit of rust on them. Thinking a soak in wd-40 rust remover won't hurt. Maybe a longer term soak in kerosene would help too. Gonna be a lot of polising need done to get this thing right. I read some where alot of the factory guns the actions the factory bluing turned a purplish redish color. Is this due to the alloy?

Piglet 545 wrote on Jul 12^th, 2024 at 10:48pm:


That is a massive action, in my opinion, case hardening is adequate.  I'd send it to Allen Springer at Snowy Mountain Blue, (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links)

Or if you don't want colors but still want it hardened, send it to Blanchards:  (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links); They may not do single items, they may charge a minimum for a batch of 10.

Alan does exceptional color case, and if you were to call him, he's probably done Wickliffe's before and can give you advice.  Blanchards do a lot of mausers and such that will be blued.  They use carbon monoxide hardening, which applies no colors.

Do all your final fitting and sanding and polishing before you send it off to be hardened.  I'd finish with wet/dry sandpaper to 400 grit.   

The fact that you say the internal parts are rusty implies that they weren't finished.  All that I have seen that came from the factory leftovers were finished and blued.  Tom Ondrus did have some less finished parts from the factory leftovers, and I know he had some parts made, but he became incapacitated and passed away before he really got production on his own underway.  His girlfriend liquidated the remainder of his stuff, as it was in progress, after his death so some of the unfinished stuff was put out there.  I know another individual bought a lot of the inventory and maybe the intellectual property (such as it was, maybe the receiver molds and some cnc templates) and tried to get pre-orders to make rifles, but I eventually saw their stuff liquidated, to yet another gunsmith who welded tangs on the actions and sold them as kits on gunbroker.  The bottom line is the rifle was too expensive to make, and the only ones that were ever economic were those that utilized the factory leftover parts that were bought at a hefty discount and assembled by individuals.   

This is in no way to take away from the rifle; it is a good, strong action that takes away much of the weaknesses of the Stevens 44 1/2 and  the CPA copy of it, and makes an exceptionally strong rifle.  The only thing to change is get rid of the awful, ugly, superfluous safety.