Re: Strawed parts
Art,
I have a lot of questions about strawing. I read about it in Walthers 'The Luger Book'and have been talking it up for a few years. I had some guys tell me that they have used a process that they called dunking in molten lead. Have you heard about that process?
I have heard that some guys have just put the part on a metal strip in a vice and used a torch until they got the proper color and then dunked it in transmission fluid to stop the heating process.
Other guys use an acid to remove the patena and some other guys use wet/dry sandpaper to remove patena. I have thought about the acid process and figured that it would prevent what I call a 'rolling of the wrists' particularly on the locking bolt. The rolling of the wrists causes the amateurish rounding of the edges on parts. In reality this is the removing of too much metal and makes the strawed parts look terrible.
I have thought about it for a while and I figured that any oven just keeps the temerature within a range of say 350 to 450 degrees. When the temperature drops to the lower range the oven heats up to the higher range. So how do you keep the temperature fairly constant at 400 degrees? Do you dip the strawed parts in something to stop the ambient temperature from over coloring the strawed parts.
I have some mint lugers and I have noticed that the strawed parts have a light varnish like coating on them. Did the Germans dunk the parts into some coolant after strawing to stop the cooking process? is this light varnish coating and result of the hot metal over heating the coolant and attaching itself to the metal?
My thoughts on the first part of this thread is that the color differences in hidden areas of the strawed parts might be the result of these parts being hung on something while being cooked. This was mass production. What ever they were hung on could have a different temperature and therefore would give a different color.
Big Norm
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