This page contains these articles: Plain Carbon Steel for Airguns Steel for Airguns What is a Billet

Understanding Tensile Strength Airgun Reservoir Threads Plain Carbon Steel for Airguns During discussions about airguns at the Little Rock Airgun Show, many people tal ked about some of the things they were making. The names of some of the steel t hey were going to use were 8620, 4140 (chrome-moly) *1, S7 (a high shock resista nt tool steel), and others. There are two things that I dislike about this idea that you have to use alloy steel to make airgun parts. The first is that much of the attributes of the alloy steel mentioned are the steels characteristics AFT ER heat treatment, and not the condition of the steel as they get it or would us e it. The second is that they would have to acquire this alloy steel and then have the extra difficulty of the low machinability. All of this making the pro ject take longer and inducing difficulties, prolonging the projects time. Plain carbon steels can be used for making airguns. Plain carbon steels major al loying element is carbon.*2 The SAE number designation begins with the first of four digits to be 10, and the second two digits to be the carbon content in the percentage of 1%. So a low carbon steel would be written as 1018. Low carbon steel, also called mild steel, has a carbon range of .05 to .30. The low and high of this range of steel would be written 1005 and 1030. This low carbon content steel cannot be hardened by applying heat and quenching. The se steels would require a higher carbon content in order to be hardened and the only way to change a low carbon steel to a higher carbon steel is to infuse carb on into the surface layer (because you cant make it go any deeper than that), whi ch would be called case hardening. A spring guns end cap and barrel block would satisfactorily be made of 1018. A spring guns tube would be made of 1020 or 102 6. This tube is readily available, is commonly used for pneumatic and hydraulic cylinders, isnt crack sensitive *3 and is more fatigue resistant than some alloy steels. To make the barrel, you can use 1018 steel. It is common as dirt and m ore than tough enough and wear resistant for lead pellets. If you were hammer f orging/cold forming the barrel, 1018 would work just fine. It doesnt exhibit col d shortness, which means it would flow/form very well without having to be heate d. These same characteristics are useful for making other parts that would be f ormed without having to heat the part red hot to bend it. Medium carbon steel has a carbon range above .30 030 and 1060. This steel can be directly hardened by ater. This steel is what you would use for link pins the commonly available steels for doing this with is to .60 and is written as 1 heating and quenching in w and trigger parts. One of 1045.

High carbon steel has a carbon range above .60 to 2.0. Although carbon is soluble in steel, up to 2%, commonly available high carbon steels usually dont ex ceed 1%. This steel can be directly hardened by heating and quenching, but usua lly requires a slower quench such as brine water or light oil, and tempering. T his higher carbon steel would be used for the main spring. The steel for this i s 1095. High carbon steels, like 1095, will easily loose their carbon content n ear the surface when heat-treated, unless done in a vacuum or atmosphere control led furnace. The heat treat process would burn the carbon out of the surface la yer, leaving a rough surface that would promote cracking of the spring. Polishi ng the formed spring would be nearly impossible. Thats why springs are made of t empered and polished spring wire. You purchase the wire already tempered and po lished, and wind it into the spring yourself.

Now Im not advocating that you have to build a gun this way. My advice is d ont let your project be slowed down or derailed because of a dependence on the be lief that you need an alloy steel to make the airgun. At the Little Rock Airgun Show I had seen an airgun part and the fellow sai d that he made it out of 4140 and was welded in part of its fabrication. I aske d him what temperature he tempered the part to and he was dumbfounded for an ans wer. He hadnt tempered it. The thought escaped him. The welding heat would adv ersely affect the 4140 alloy, making it brittle in and adjacent to the weld area . Tempering would prevent this brittleness. Without tempering the part is liab le to break right next to the weld.

1) Chrome-moly is a general term. It could be used for any of the 41 prefix steels, but depending on the carbon range of the steel it would require a diffe rent heat treat. So if you say chrome-moly and youre using a 4130 steel, so as not to confuse it with 4150, why not just say 4130. If you have to use the words chro me-moly use it after the number: 4130, chrome-moly. But even that is redundant bec ause the 41 prefix designates the steel as a chrome-molybdenum type. Thus you w ould be saying: Chrome-molybdenum, .30 carbon content, chrome-moly. 2) Almost all steels contain manganese. Manganese is added as a de-oxidizer to purify the steel. Manganese has an affect on the hardenability of the steel , but is it very small, and not to the extent that carbon does. Other elements found in steel, but are considered to be impurities and are held to a very low a mount are phosphorous, sulphur and silicon. 3) Crack sensitive is the affect that some alloy steels, if not properly hea t-treated and tempered, will crack due to fatigue or work harden in stress areas . So if your spring gun had a pinned-in cap, the tube would start to crack arou nd the cross pin holding the pin in. ******************************************************************************** ********

Steel for Airguns When I make an airgun, I use steel. I dont substitute aluminum, zinc die ca st or brass, where steel should be used. Just because these non-ferrous metals are softer and easier to work with is no reason to use them as a substitute for steel, when steel is best for the job. Steel is the material of choice. In my first vocation as a tool and die maker, I used and made everything of steel. I have sheared, formed, blanked, drawn, machined, cut and welded steel to make th e tools of industry to shear form, blank, draw, forge, cut and weld on a mass ma nufacturing scale. For airguns, I dont use just whatever steel comes to hand. I specify partic ular steels for specific uses. The selection of a steel alloy is based on the f unction of the part. Does the part have to be hardened? Is it to be tough but ductile? Will the machining of the steel leave a smooth finish? Understanding the properties of steels allows the selection of a specific type that is suitabl e for a particular use. Steels have a designation number based on its elemental composition. The Soc iety of Automotive Engineers (SAE) has a numerical system of designation. The SAE steels I use in making the Outlaw Rifles are: 1018, 1020, 1045, 1095, 1117,

1215, 12L14, O1 and 416 stainless. 1045 is chosen for a part that needs to be hardened. The primary hardening e lement in steel is carbon. The last two digits of 1045 are the carbon content. 1045 has .45 of 1% carbon content; actual allowable is between 0.43 and 0.50. Above approximately .35 carbon content can be hardened directly. Below .35 carb on content, carbon has to be added to be able to heat treat harden it. An examp le, 1018 steel has to be carborized (adding carbon) which only penetrates slight ly into the surface. The result is case hardening. 1045 has approximately .45 carbon content dispersed throughout, so it can be hardened all the way through. Or, by flame hardening, as deep as the hardening temperature is allowed to pene trate during heating. 1117 steel is a free machining alloy. It will yield a smoother finish than a ny of the ten "10" prefix steels. The rods and bars, zinc plated and plain, tha t are sold in hardware stores are most commonly 1018 steel. As a comparison, 10 18 has a tensile strength of 70/80 KSI (thousand pounds square inch) and a hardn ess of 80/90 on the Rockwell Hardness B scale. 1117 is 80/90 KSI, slightly st ronger, and at 80/90 B just as hard, but it machines almost twice as easy. No t earing and burring of the machined surface. This steel (1117) is widely used fo r barrels on .22 rimfire rifles and shotguns. Likewise, I use this steel to mak e barrels for air rifles. Now, the lowly 1018 steel still has its place. 1018 is inexpensive and commo nly available. 1018 does not exhibit cold shortness. This is a condition where steel will fracture rather than bend. Steels that do not have cold shortness a re heated to allow for bending. 1018 is used for a shock load within its streng th limit. It will not eventually fail after repeated shock loading due to fract uring. 1018 being tough, but ductile, is the steel is use for the action lug. This is what mounts the stock to the action and transfers the recoil to the stoc k. Stainless steels (SS) greatest asset is its corrosion resistance. Stainless steel is predominately iron (Fe) alloyed with the expensive elements chromium ( Cr) and nickel (Ni). For this example I divide commonly encountered stainless s teels simply by magnetic and non-magnetic. Magnetic stainless steel has SAE num bers in the 400 range and contain chromium from 11 1/2 to 18%, dependant on the type. Non-magnetic SS has a 300 numbering range and has both chromium (15 to 26 %) but also nickel (1 to 22%) as alloying elements. For longevity and heavy duty use, stainless steel is the upgrade from brass i n valves and sealing surfaces, as used by industry for pneumatic and hydraulic u ses. I use stainless steel for the valve body in the Outlaw rifles. My choice is 416 stainless steel. 416 has a machinability rating the same as 1117. Not s o difficult to cut as to break taps and dull cutters. This is important, for th e valve is threaded in three locations. The threads must be smooth to engage th e mating parts. The threads cannot be weakened by ripping or tearing of the V thread. The valve seat surface must be machined smoothly without burring or smearing that can happen with other grades of stainless steel. The valve seat surface is first cut in a lathe, then coined in a press (impacting the surface with a hard ened steel form to compress the metal), then polished in a speed lathe, making t he best surface for valve sealing. Many air rifles use brass for the valve. Typical construction has a brass va lve threaded for the connection of the valve and the reservoir tube. The common ly used SAE #360 brass has a tensile strength of 58 KSI. This is not as strong as 416, at 80 to 100 KSI. For this reason the brass threaded section must be lo nger to engage more threads. The extra length makes for a longer path for the a

ir charge, adds extra weight and reduces the volume of the reservoir. Most air rifles that use a brass valve are in the 12 to 30 ft. lbs. range. T he Brigand (.375 cal.) starts at 60 ft. lbs. and the Bandit (.50 cal.) exceeds 2 50 ft. lbs. The valve area is larger and the cycling is more energetic than oth er pre-charge rifles. #360 brass is softer, 78 B Rockwell, than #416 stainless steel at 90/95 B Rockwell. For long life, #416 SS will stand up to valve seat p ounding where I found #360 brass will not. I do use brass. I use brass for what it is suitable for, a bearing surface. I use it for the O ring gland nut that seals the valve stem. There are other mechanical properties that I consider in steel selection. El astic modulus, elongation yield and Izod shock properties are beyond the scope o f this writing. One of the nice things about steel is the surface treatment called bluing. T he steel parts are polished for a reflective surface, then immersed in a 285 deg ree bath of dissolved salts, which gives a black oxide rust resistant blue-black finish. There is a cold "bluing" and Ive seen it on some very expensive airgu ns. The maker of the cold bluing says that the cold bluing is not as good as th e hot bluing, but is a inexpensive substitute for it. Why substitute, why not u se the best to begin with? I would rather use quality materials and processes t han hyperbole. ******************************************************************************** *********** Added Aug. 24, 2005 This was originally a post of the Airgun Forum about the misuse of the term bille t. This was an informational post so that aspiring machinists would use the prop er terms. It became a hot button issue, one egomaniac actually demoted himself from airgun maker to a breech maker (such as making Crosman replacement breeches ) so he could claim I was picking on him. Since so much interest was shown I de cided to give it a permanent place here. What is a Billet and Why an Airgun Doesnt use it A billet is a semi-finished piece of metal and theyre not used in an airgun. Airguns are made of finished metals; bar stock (round, square or rectangular) an d tubing. All of which has been cold finished, or cold drawn, so as to have a g ood surface finish. When molten metal is poured into an ingot mold, the metal is allowed to cool unt il it solidifies. While it is still hot and plastic it is rolled to shape. The r olling is just like using a rolling pin on biscuit dough. The roller presses do wn and smoothes the surface. On the hot ingot it is done from all sides to make a square or rectangular, in cross section, piece of metal with rounded corners, called a billet. A billet is a semi-finished piece of metal that has been roughly worked to shape and will go on to other finishing processes. The billet will be re-rolled whil e hot to further bring it to the desired finished size. This hot rolling has sca le. The scale is the decarborized metal that the carbon has been burned out of. While the metal is red hot, its surface is in contact with the atmosphere, whic h burns the surface. To get a good surface on the metal the final processes are done cold. When done cold, there is no scale produced and the surface finish i s better. But cold rolling takes more time to do because you have to use more p asses, through the rolls, to size the metal. The rolls, used for cold rolling,

have to be run at a much higher pressure to form the metal in the cold state and the rolls have to be maintained with a high polish, so as to leave a good finis h on the metal. The cold finishing of the metal is the expensive part to do, bu t the bar stock produced has a good surface, is dimensionally accurate and, on s quare and rectangular stock, has square corners. Billets, the unfinished metal bars, are used where the manufacturers dont want to pay the extra money for the finishing of the metal because it would not add val ue to the finished product. For example: forgers use billets because every surf ace of the metal is reshaped in the forging process. A race car crankshaft can be machined out of a billet because the surface finish of the billet has nothing to do with the finished product, so why pay the extra money for a good surface finish? Custom aluminum wheels are made of billet because the finished product in no way benefits from starting with good surface finish metal. So why increa se the cost of the finished product by wrongly specifying that a cold finished m etal would be your working stock? A breech maker tried to impress people by saying that the breech was made from a billet. The breech was made from bar stock and its a mistake to believe that ma king a breech from a roughly formed piece of metal would make a better breech. But thats what people claiming to make things out of billets are telling you. Wh en I have students in the shop, one of the things I insist on is that they learn the language, to know the names of things and their use. If one doesnt, theyre go ing to use the wrong terms and impress people with how much they dont know. If you dont believe me, call your local steel warehouse and tell them you want to order a billet. I use bar stock and drawn tubing to make airguns. Billet steel doesnt come in sm all sizes and, being a semi-finished product, it has a poor surface finish, like an I beam or angle iron would have. During the discussion on the forum, Tim summ ed it up well by saying that the term billet is used more for marketing & merchand izing than for its true definition. Scott Laughlin had good insight that curren tly the term "billet" is being misused, just like the term "turbo" was in the 80 s. Other terms: Bloom, slab, sheet bar are similar to a billet in that they are se mi-finished mill products of square or rectangular cross section, hot rolled fro m ingots, but not finished rolled so they have rounded corners. The difference between them is their cross section area and their intended use. These terms ar e used by industry and are defined by the industry organizations: ASTM (American Standards Testing & Materials), SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers), ASME , A ISI (American Iron & Steel Institute) & ASM (American Society of Metals). ******************************************************************************** ********** Airgun Reservoir Part 2: Strength of Materials, Understanding Tensile Strength To determine the strength of materials there is a standardized test. The subjec t material is formed to a standardized shape then its placed into a machine and i s literally pulled apart. The first picture shows standardized test specimen sizes. The second picture shows a test sample after being pulled apart. This test yiel ds information of a multitude of characteristics of the material that was tested . The information, such as the number of pounds per square inch for tensile str ength, is the strength of the size and shape of the sample used in the test. Th is number is not directly transferable to any other shape of the same material e xcept when used in the proper formula for determining the strength of the item y

ou are working with. First is the tensile strength; that is the amount of force needed for the materi al to break. Elastic limit is the amount of force applied, that when released, the material w ill not return to its original form. So below the elastic limit the material ca n take that amount of load and, when the load is removed, recover. Yield strength is the other side of the elastic limit. At this level of applied force permanent deformation takes place. This is where the metal stretches and does not return to its original shape. Steel companies usually also list these two other types of information to ductil e materials: Elongation: as a percentage of how far the material stretched between its yield point and its tensile strength. Reduction of area: as a percentage of how much the material thinned out (stretch ing by thinning) prior to breaking. The tensile strength figure arrived at is the ultimate strength which when an en gineer uses that figure it is formulaic. The tensile strength listing is the st rength of the test piece. This test piece data is then used in engineering form ulas, taking into account the materials shape and thickness. The tensile streng th figure is not an end-all in itself and should not be used as the actual worki ng strength of the material. When selecting material, the engineer always leave s a safety factor where the ultimate tensile strength is reduced by 20-50% as th e actual working application of the material. This picture shows material samples all of the same rated tensile strength, but their applications are entirely different. 1626.jpg (69130 bytes) The first one on the left is a solid bar. It has the same rated strength as the others, but since it has no cavity its unusable as an airgun reservoir. The tubing, using typical minimal tensile strength, without a safety margin, wou ld have an ultimate burst pressure of: Second from left is .156 wall thickness. Burst pressure would be 20280psi. Third is .125 wall. Burst would be 16250psi. Fourth is .093 wall. Burst would be 12090psi. Fifth is .065 wall. Burst would be 8450psi. And the one on the far right is .032 wall. Burst would be 1460psi. But an engineer would not use the burst pressure for usage, he would select the yield strength of the material and include a 20% safety factor on that and then would calculate its working pressure to have a multiple safe overpressure. As a n example, this would make the .065 wall thickness tubes working pressure to be 2 288psi. You can find the minimum wall thickness of a tube that would hold the pressure, plus the safety factor of the working pressure, that you want to use. But is it thick enough to be threaded? Even if it were not threaded and had a cross-pinn

ed plug end, is it strong enough to resist the end pressure and not tear off the end of the tube with the plug? Yield strength is to be used in the strength calculation. In the event of fail ure would you want it to fail soft, or resist failure to the highest degree and fa il hard? A theoretical example is if you were to charge the reservoir rapidly thr ough a small orifice (creating heat), igniting any oil, plastic valve or seal ma terial inside of the reservoir. In this example you would have a very rapid pre ssure spike. If you chose a material that has a greater amount of pressure diff erence between yield and tensile, where the threaded or pinned plug would be, th e metal would move out of the way (expanding), creating a leak, which would be a pressure drop (like a safety valve). With some pressure drop, the pressure spi ke may not exceed the tensile strength of the reservoir. In this case you have a no longer serviceable reservoir, but you have averted a potentially worse disa ster, the soft failure. The opposite example is using a material that is strong and would contain the pr essure spike. The error is to make a lightweight reservoir using material that h as a high yield and tensile strength. During the pressure spike, the pressure b uilds up to the point of yield, but the yield is high enough that it cant yield f ast enough to let off pressure. Therefore the pressure spike could exceed the t ensile strength of the material. Possible failures are: the plug end or the con nection end would separate, or if the ends held, the reservoir tube would split longitudinally releasing all the combustion gasses at once, the hard failure. If size and weight were not a concern, it could easily be done by just building a m assive reservoir, but then it would be too heavy to be used on an airgun. Hydraulic tubing is the opposite of the above, where the tensile and the yield a re too far apart. An engineer uses the yield strength for determining a pressur e vessel. In Airgun Reservoir Part 1 I mentioned that there was no engineering recommendation for using hydraulic tubing as a pressure vessel and thats because its annealed (made softer/more ductile). It is annealed so as to be formed, bent , flared and crimped without cracking. This tubing still has the tensile streng th of 55,000psi, but the yield strength is only 25,000psi. This is why anyone w anting to build an airgun should have reference material, such as Paper Tools fo r Making Airguns on the "In the Shop" page. The comparison is if you were usin g DOM tubing, 1 outside diameter with .093 wall thickness, the working pressure w ould be 3273psi, but using the same size tubing out of hydraulic tubing the work ing pressure would be only 1488psi. The 1 hydraulic tubings maximum, before yiel d, is 3720psi. 720psi more than 3000psi fill, is not enough of a safety factor. This is the difficulty of inferred engineering. The inference is if its good en ough for hydraulic fluid, why isnt it good enough for an airgun reservoir. Why is nt it good enough for an airgun reservoir? Because as manufactured tubing, it wa s not intended as a pressure vessel and if you didnt use 25,000psi for your calcu lation, and relied on tensile strength of 55,000psi, you only have half of the s trength you thought you had. Using hydraulic tubing, 1 diameter, to be used as a portable pressure vessel (an airgun reservoir), with a working pressure of 3000 psi, and a 2 times safety margin, you would need a wall thickness of .188 (3/16 o f an inch). Tensile strength is the point where the material fails. Yield strength is the p oint where the material gives. For an airgun reservoir you have to calculate th e yield point, where it will give. To use tensile strength only is courting dis aster. Steel tubing is what I had in mind when I wrote this. The basis of the information is from steel manufacturers and Metallurgy Theory an d Practice by Dell K. Allen.

Any errors will be corrected, please inform me. ******************************************************************************** ***********

Airgun Reservoir Part 3: Threading The strength of a thread is its root, which is the base of the thread (A). Sinc e the thread form (shape) is a 60 V, if you make the base wider you proportionally make the thread depth greater, and because the root is wider, you end up with le ss threads per inch (a coarser thread). How many threads per inch should be used? The material used dictates threads pe r inch. The softer the material, the wider the base needs to be to give it the strength necessary, so you would have a coarser thread. Brass would require a c oarser thread than steel and aluminum would require a coarser thread than brass. As a comparison, if the thread depth (C) were 16 threads per inch for a soft m aterial, then the shallower depth (B) would be 20 threads per inch, as you might use for steel. The machinist rule is: the softer the material, the coarser the thread. An example is using a 1 outside diameter steel tube and a 7/8 diameter thread, bu t changing from a steel end piece to an aluminum end piece. If an aluminum end piece is used in order to save weight, the weight savings are lost because you w ould need a thicker walled tube (D). A thicker walled tube is needed to accommo date the additional thread depth of the coarser thread that is required for use with aluminum. A thinner walled tube (E) would be used if you were using a ste el end piece; the difference being the extra depth of the thread has to be added to the inside diameter of the tube for the threads to engage in to. Just as thread depth is important to the pressure vessel, so is the method chose n to do the threading. If a tap is to be used, you would want to use a plug confi guration tap, so that the threads beyond those that are being used to make the c onnection run out (end) very quickly. Very few threads should be beyond what yo u need because the bottom of the V, to the outside diameter of the tube, is the ef fective wall thickness. Excessive threads would weaken the tube. If the tube is single point threaded, the standard practice for threading is to cut a recess (B) at the length into the tube that the thread is to be, and the c utter cuts from the inside of the tube out. This works just fine for a mechanic al fastener in most instances, but it is totally wrong for use as a pressure ves sel. The recess (depth D), which is cut to below the bottom of the thread depth (C) to allow for clearance of the cutter to be set inside the tube, is now the thinnest part of the tube. So it doesnt matter how thick the wall is, even it its a 1/8 wall (A), the recess (B) is now the thinnest, and weakest, part of the tub e. (Thats why I say some custom guns are dangerous.) Consequently, the tube s hould be rated for pressure at the wall thickness of B. The tube is further wea kened because of the right angle cut on the inside of the recess, which is a str ess riser and the most likely spot for this tube to fail. To avoid this amateur machining mistake, you would thread into the tube just as if you were externally threading to a shoulder. When threading to a shoulder, j ust as the tool is approaching the shoulder it is withdrawn from the cut. When internally threading, you would thread to the desired length and then back out t he tool from the cut, leaving the same type of thread that a plug tap would leav e. The above is much more understandable to somebody who has already done some thre

ading. I invite questions so as to spur thought and the answers to help to brin g clarity. Also see Making Airgun Barrels, go to the home page and click on the box "Making Airgun Barrels".