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I own a Smith & Wesson Model 60 revolver, which is stainless steel. I want to smooth out the area on the frame where the moving parts are contained, so that there is less friction, and I can achieve a smoother trigger pull. I realize many of the moving parts have a thin layer of case hardening in the areas where they lock up with other moving parts, and I am not going to attempt to do any work on moving parts. My questions on doing this are; 1) is the inside of the revolver's frame case hardened? If so, I will pass on this project, so that I don't damage my revolver, and 2) what are the recommended materials and tools to use? Thanks.
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You can't case harden stainless. Stainless is through hardened or work hardened
Just polish out the machine marks and call it good.
I'd recommend some fine as in 220 grit being course in this case, 600 to 1200 being fine to extra fine diemakers stones from geisswen. The EDM blue to be exactLast edited by kcstott; 04-07-2017, 6:04 PM. -
I'm also considering doing this. Have watched the video. Easy does it. Please post your results and where you get the stones. Stones vs sandpaper?"It does not take a majority to prevail... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men."-
Samuel AdamsComment
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I agree with kcstott. I got the EDM blue stones. They are great!
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Well stainless steel does develop a skin that is about 4-6 thou thick and can dull cutting tools if you don't get under it when squaring up a block.
But all stainless steels that can be heat treated, won't take a case in the traditional sense, you can nitride stainless but in doing so you can run into the problem of not being able to polish and it can allow a part to corrode more easily. Nitriding is done as a surface hardening enhancement to an already hard part in the case of stainless. So you have a stainless part the is 40Rc and you nitride it to hit 65Rc.
I don't see any reason S&W would do this except on the working surfaces of the sear and hammer hook. because it's not like you can localize the case. you either do the entire part or none of it in a production setting. In any event you still have a 40Rc core that is still damn hard and tough.
Unlike a traditional case hardened carbon steel part that could have a core hardness of 20Rc or so. So if you polished through those you would have ruined the part in most cases.
Now all that said unless you have the spec sheet in front of you you aren't really going to know what S&W did. but 40Rc on sliding surfaces is plenty hard enough to avoid wear. you're only polishing surface tooling marks so you'll only be removing a few tenth of a thou let alone a full thou. i.e. .0003" as compared to .001"Last edited by kcstott; 04-08-2017, 11:19 AM.Comment
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I found Gesswein's website. I am assuming that I will only need one stone in each recommended grit, but Gesswein does not sell individual stones. I have searched the internet, amazon.com and ebay and cannot find a place that will sell individual stones. Does anyone have a recommendation, or is anyone willing to do a group purchase?sigpicComment
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