Removing Cerrosafe Chamber Casting

[tlyne]

I need some help, How do you remove Cerrosafe Chamber Casting when you have left  in for over an hour. I remember it wrong. I though it would shrinks to allow you to extraction it after an hour. After I read the instructions it was the resverse. Should I just take a torch and melt the cerrosafe out? Thanks for any help, Twyman

[bigdaddytacp]

I need some help, How do you remove Cerrosafe Chamber Casting when you have left  in for over an hour. I remember it wrong. I though it would shrinks to allow you to extraction it after an hour. After I read the instructions it was the resverse. Should I just take a torch and melt the cerrosafe out? Thanks for any help, Twyman

...........It expands one quarter of one percent and to remove I would strip the action/barrel and remove any oils and heat the action in a oven at 200degreesF with the action laying on some alum.foil and avoid any hotter temperature of a torch......the cerrosafe will liquidfy and let you push the cast out.......I would place a patch plug in the barrel at the cast end to let you use a soild rod to push the plug and cerrosafe out of the action/chamber.....have a pan standing by to catch the cerrosafe....which can be remelted and reused....AND have you some gloves or oven mitts? to hold the warm action...this isn't hot enough to hurt the action/barrel and is too warm for just hands......check the cooled action/chamber for any stuck droplets and reclean the chamber and try again..for a good cast with a cooled chamber........also make sure you don't overfill the chamber and let the cerrosafe get in the locking lug recesses and stick the cast in the gun........a little birdie told me that COULD happen........and how I learned about the oven/gloves and barrel plug.....from hearsay of course!!!!!!sure.......hth....good luck and good shooting!!

[tlyne]

Update on Cerrosafe Chamber Casting . I took a soldering Iron  
and melted it out in a pan for reuse. It was in an encore barrel which helped. Thanks for your response.I will add this up for a lessons learned.  Next question?? Is their a release agent for this Cerrosafe Chamber Casting material? Thanks again for holding my hand. Twyman

[Nobade]

You don't need release agent. Just make sure the chamber is clean. My method is to put a loaded round in the chamber, push a patch on a jag in from the muzzle 'till it touches, and unscrew the rod. After you pour the casting, just screw the rod back on and tap the end. Out pops the casting, nice and easy. Do it right away, don't wait.

[gunnut69]

Nabade is correct but you must wait until the casting is solid.  The alloy will stay mushy if the barreled action is heated before the pour.  I recommend the barreled action be just warmed a bit.  More and the casting may not release as it cools.. I usually wait about 5 minutes before removal. It should pop right out..  You can graphite the chamber a bit if you must but it usually isn't needed.

[KSR]

Another good way to remove a stuck cerro safe casting is to use a pan
that is large enough to fit the action and chamber into, fill the pan with
water, heat the water up to boiling and dunk the action into the water
for a short time. The cerro safe will melt out and fall to the bottom of the
pan. When the water cools you can retrieve the cerro safe from the pan.

[unclenick]

Brownells has a .PDF file of instructions for Cerrosafe: http://www.brownells.com/aspx/NS/General/DisplayPDF.aspx?f=bt002015.pdf.  The shrinking is supposed to occur in about 30 minutes, after which the casting is supposed to just fall out, then expand back to size in another 30 minutes.  I've never had it just fall out.  Re-reading the instructions I believe the problem may have been that I am getting it too hot?  The next time I will try a double-boiler to see if that helps?

Meanwhile, I always keep a couple of 1/4" brass rods from Home Depot or Lowe's for various bore-related activities.  Smaller sizes can be had from hobby shops, larger from machine tool supply houses.  I drop one of these down the muzzle so I can hammer against it to knock a Cerrosafe casting out.  That seems to work.  A two-pound hammer lets you swing relatively slowly and still have enough inertia to do some work.  I also use these rods to push slugs down the barrel when I am firelapping.

If you are only interested in the main chamber dimensions, you can get them from a fired case closely enough for adjusting sizing dies.  If you want the groove and throat details, another, perhaps better technique than Cerrosafe comes from LBT's Veral Smith.  He says the Cerrosafe castings he's worked with have not always expanded predictably enough.  Apparently the shrinking and expanding has to be timed carefully, and is easy to screw up.  What Smith does instead is chamber a fired case with a long lead slug in it that is narrower than bore diameter and reaches up will past the throat.  He then then drops a rod down the bore and hammers from the muzzle end of the rod until the lead has been cold-forged out into the freebore and throat.  What pops out is the right size and stays that way.

In the meantime, I would just wet a patch with spray Pam and push it down the bore for a release agent for Cerrosafe.

Nick

[Judson]

As a point of interest, if you ever have a broken shell case you can not get out of a chamber that stuff is great for getting it out!    Pore it in, let it cool and put a cleaning rod down the muzzle and give it a tap, out comes the broken shell case.     I learned this doing work for a class10 dealer who had lots of MGs with large chambers and lots of old ammo.