Good morning,

I am a student at the Pennsylvania Gunsmith School looking for advice/suggestions on action blocks and small parts fixtures for some builds this fall. 

I have managed to get a collection of actions: high wall, low wall, ballard, sharps 1875 and a borchardt for final projects.

Internal blocks seem pretty straight forward but I am open to any feedback or block ideas. Levers, tangs etc however are a different story. 

Should levers and tangs be hardened separately or on the action? 

Should the halves of the ballard bock be hardened screwed together or separately on a fixture?

What type of block or fixtures have others had success with? 

Any input is appreciated, thanks.


DnI

Use soft non-hardenable screws to hold things together. You may have to drill them out.
Case hardened parts shrink just slightly.
Chuck

Sounds like you will be attending the restoration course that Doug Turnbull called me about. Don't look for advice on the Internet, Doug has been doing it for 40 years, listen to what he has to say 

Respectfully 
Mike

Hi Tom,

I don't think the PM made it to me.

DnI

I sent the pm to Mike….



Tom Klinger

I worked there early on. Doug took over the case hardening 'project' in the very late 80's/early 90's from his father, Terry.
Terry had been toying with it for a number of yrs and wanted to get a way from it. So Doug was given the workings and he was no longer a sales-person in the 'front' which was Creekside Gun Shop.

We used a few spacers especially in the Parker frames. But not too much else that I remember.
Then ,,no spacers or fixtures to hold parts from warping. Nothing.

We did get some warping. contrary to what was said.
Most was easily straightened with educated strikes with a hammer.
Lock plates generally wanted to slightly warp. The breech block opening on some Lever actions closed up so that the block would not re-enter the action.
Steel wedges and careful hammer work opened the actions back up for the most part.
I wondered why a slave breechblock couldn't be placed in the frame for the process, but never got an answer to that.

Yes some parts cracked. TIG welding for repair was often the  fix and then run through again.
Annealing before doing the new CCH work was always done.
Some modern parts and actions were not done at all due to the modern metal alloy(s) not playing nice with the old CCH method.

Don't know what they do now, lots of yrs gone by.

We used only 2 different wood/bone char mixes. 
2/1 and 3/1 Wood to Bone char.

Parker colors were Colt colors, etc.
1435F* was the temp and had to be strictly controlled.

Like I said probably much has changed over the yrs.

2152hq wrote on Sep 13^th, 2026 at 11:32am:


Were you quenching at that temp? I understand that most people today might bring it to critical to soak for a period of time but quenching is usually done at a lower temp. 

Just curious is all. 

Thanks,
          Steve