[machinist89]

Winter's approach has motived me to start the bluing project for my 1928 Colt kit. This a new endeavor for me. I have lots of miles parkerizing gun parts, but nether the experience of bluing. I did a lot of research and tried to convince myself that Duracoat paint might suffice. But calmer voices prevailed and down the bluing rabbit hole I go. This is the first installment of my experience with this project. As a teaser, the process is not as complicate and resource intensive as I feared. I am using Mark Lee's Express Blue #1 solution instead of the tradition bluing salt baths that seem to me a bridge to far. Parts were blasted with 150-180 mesh garnet media. Nitrile gloves with cotton over gloves are used to handle the parts through the process. Here's the first parts just after blasting.

I heated the parts up in the oven to about 170 F, then applied a coating of the bluing solution using a cotton swab. If the parts are at the right temperature, the bluing makes a sizzling sound on contact and immediately dries. I put two coats on the parts. I used a Harbor Freight heat gun to keep the parts at temperature, which is just about too hot to handle. The parts then went into a pot of boiling water for 10 minutes. I pulled the parts out of the pot, dried them and used oil-free steel wool to card the bluing oxide crust off the parts. The parts went back in the oven to heat back up and the cycle started again. I did this six times, while observing the bluing get darker and darker. I had some rust stains and bluing streaks at the start, but they slowly disappeared by the time I stopped the cycles .After the bluing process was done, I dropped the parts in hot water with baking soda to halt the rusting process, then dried in the oven. I think this step could be eliminated by just simply greasing the parts with RIG universal grease. Here's an image of the completed parts. I'll say right now that it is incredibly difficult to take a decent picture of blued parts. The bolt carrier in the background is from a Polish DPM-28. I feel the Pols were at the apex of bluing proficiency during the cold war period, so the comparison is markedly striking. My parts were not oiled, so they have a satin sheen. They should shine a bit more with an oil coating, but I'm wondering if the garnet mesh is too low for my taste. By the way, the parts are not blue, they are black.

The whole process was not that complicated or expensive. It did take about 3 hours and required questionable access to the kitchen stove and facilities (they will be gutting my apartment when I move out anywhoo). The carding processing with steel wool was tedious, time-consuming, and messy (wool sh*t goes everywhere and fingers get sore). I have since ordered a carding wheel from Brownells. I have a dc motor that I'll used to tune to about 500 rpm. I think this will significantly improve the zin of the experience. In the end, the rabbit hole was short and trauma-free. Another interest thing is that I was working on a Polish RPD project this weekend. I was pressing the barrel parts on and realized that my kit was rode hard and put away wet. Some of the parts had corrosion on on the side pointed toward the gas regulator. I sanded the corrosion off and tried to bluing the parts without removing the good bluing from the remaining surfaces. I was surprised that this worked very well. The old good bluing remained intact and the new bluing is indistinguishable from the bluing the Pols puts down in 1959. It was a good day. Hope this inspires others to make the leap.

RPD sling and gas cylinder support thingie, the top was seriously corroded.

Cheers M89

 

[Mr.Maim]

Nice work machinist and thank you for the great post and walk-through!

Question: what do you mean by this statement ? "They should shine a bit more with an oil coating, but I'm wondering if the garnet mesh is too low for my taste."

 

[machinist89]

I think the garnet mesh may need to be higher (finer grit) to produce a bluing finish that is somewhere between flat and satin Closer to satin is prefer by me.

 

[Abominog]

This is an incredibly opportune post, as I have come to the same conclusion on what to do with my 1928- and not 12 hours ago!

My OOW was obviously "sand" blasted with rocks, then parkerized for six seconds (I got it that way). The results are nothing less than awful- the gun looks like a ground-dug relic.

I explored several options:

1. Hot dip blue- but the service provider won't do it unless the 1928 is complete disassembled and all the internal parkerizing is removed, because park destroys the blue solution (I know, I've seen it happen.) And I don't want to tear out rivets. There's also the issue (albeit questionable) of putting a complete receiver box and water jacket into the blue solution from the water tank- the temperature match would have to be perfect.

2. Rust blue- in general, can't do myself, and the most recent quote was $1200 not including polishing. That's a lot of money I won't recoup if I sell.

3. Cold blue- well, what to say, it's cold blue, I might as well use a black sharpie. Some internet "experts" claim Oxpho Blue penetrates, provides rust protection, etc., but others (whom I believe more) say that's BS. Besides which, the largest piece I could find to have been (claimed to been) successfully Oxpho blued was a pistol- not a water jacket.

Then I stumbled on Herter's Belgian Blue from Brownell's and started researching that. As it turns out, many people recommend Lee's as the better product. So Lee's it is.

I still have outstanding questions:
1. Can the kitchen oven be used without the wife kicking my ass? Does it stink, does it make a mess?
2. How to heat a 40" water jacket/ receiver box...it won't fit in the oven anyway.
3. What to card with steel wool, and what (and when) to use a polishing wheel

This sounds like a great project to do on the deck in Miami. However, as of right now I'm in the NE, there is 3" of snow, and the temp is 21 degrees. I have access to a shop with 40" heated stainless tanks, but no 40" oven- can it be heated with an industrial heat gun? ETA, Brownell's website description says:

No damp cabinets or long rusting periods required to get top-quality, good-looking blues. Heat gun or part to 150°-200° F. with propane torch; swab on solution, immerse in boiling water for 5 minutes and card with soft wire wheel or fine steel wool. Repeat the application of solution and boiling until color wanted is achieved, then neutralize. Complete instructions included.

I'd like to get my strategy and details determined prior to starting, so insights are appreciated.

Hope you don't mind that I threw in my two cents on the same project.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

[Mr.Maim]

I think the garnet mesh may need to be higher (finer grit) to produce a bluing finish that is somewhere between flat and satin Closer to satin is prefer by me.

Understood. That is what I thought you meant but having never used garnet I wasn't sure. Thanks!

 

[machinist89]

Happy Thanksgiving and thanks for your addition to this thread. It's very cool that you working through this challenge at the same time! I think collective thinking allows us to better innovate. I read many posts that praised Mark Lee's bluing products and supported the notion that you could obtain a fine bluing finish without going the traditional hot salt bath and rusting cabinet route. I was a little skeptical about this, but tried it myself to see what it could produce. My first test run was a British Lancaster that I made operational from a dummy gun. The front barrel shroud was welded to my new receiver. The barrel shroud, trigger group, and other parts had a beautiful rust patina that i wanted to save and replicate on the new receiver. I talked with my chemist friends and they had a bunch of toxic chemical options, but then I discovered Lee's browning solution. That's what I used and OMG the front and back of the gun nearly match now. The only difference is that the new finish does not have the honest wear of the old parts. I took some course steel wool and tried to simulate that too. However, the finish was so tough, I had to use sandpaper! That convinced me that this bluing approach was good enough for my purposes. I used the same bluing steps as described earlier. Anyway I digress, to the point and by the way it just started snowing here too, here are responses to your questions:

I still have outstanding questions:
1. Can the kitchen oven be used without the wife kicking my ass? Does it stink, does it make a mess?

Ah, yes and no. Let's assume your wife is visiting her Mom for the weekend, then you are good to go. My current work situation has me living out of town during the week, so a have a dumpy apartment that serves as my away gunsmithing shop. The management is gutting each one as people move out, so I'm not worried. The solution does not smell to me, nor does the process smell unpleasant. One of the greatest features of Lee's products is the nontoxic ingredients, or so says the label. The process does create a mess. Everything the solution touches turns rust color, that be the carpet, the table, the countertops and so on. Steel wool filings go everywhere. I am using my stainless parkerization pots and the boil water leaves stubborn rust deposits that are hard to remove, but it can be cleaned up with elbow grease.

2. How to heat a 40" water jacket/ receiver box...it won't fit in the oven anyway.

I think there are many ways to do this. One thought is to use bluing tanks with boiling water to heat the jacket. When you pull the parts out, they almost immediately dry. Just use paper towel to finish drying the part, and then start your swabbing with the bluing solution. Use a heat gun to keep the temperature in the preferred zone. Put two coats on, then back in the boil for another cycle. You could also build a heating cabinet and use the heat gun as the source (hopeful not ignition!). That should work, I think using a propane torch is just asking for trouble. Or you could use my wife's Thermador double-wide gas oven, but she would not be happy, and it only single-wide anyway.

3. What to card with steel wool, and what (and when) to use a polishing wheel

I used oil-free 0000 steel wool, as shown in the image. You card after every boil step to remove the rust crust. I am switching to a Brownell's 360-164-631WB carding wheel that I bought here:
https://www.brownells.com/gunsmith-...stainless-steel-brushing-wheels-prod6762.aspx

I am going to use a 90VDC motor powered using a dimmer switch and half-wave rectifier to control the rpm. I'll let you know how that goes.

Eat in excess and be happy! M89

 

[R.S.Mtn.]

Skip the dimmer and use a Variac autotransformer. Ebay that. Thanks for the instructional on the blueing I may have to try that one day myself.

Aaron

 

[SilentNight1647]

Skip the dimmer and use a Variac autotransformer. Ebay that. Thanks for the instructional on the blueing I may have to try that one day myself.

Aaron

Going to second this, a Variac will give you many many moons of good service and are built like tanks especially the old ones.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Ge...h=item546611f8db:g:YRcAAOSwuNNb6P40:rk:7:pf:0

This one looks pretty hood but I can assure you it will provide the control you are after.

 

[usmc1988]

I used a propane BBQ to do an MG34 barrel jacket.

 

[Mr.Maim]

My OOW was obviously "sand" blasted with rocks, then parkerized for six seconds (I got it that way). The results are nothing less than awful- the gun looks like a ground-dug relic.

I'm just now getting caught up on this thread and read your post @Abominog and had to comment that this part ^^^ made me laugh out loud! :rofl:

 

[Abominog]

How hard is carding tight areas like the underside of the box and inside the t&e mount holes?

 

[machinist89]

Steel wool can be used to get into nearly all tight-spots, but it tends to catch on the part's transitions and then comes apart pretty quickly. I just received my carding wheel from Brownells, so I'll post an update on this soon. m89

How hard is carding tight areas like the underside of the box and inside the t&e mount holes?

 

[barrelxchange]

I use Brownells Dicropan IM. It's a hot water blue and works great. Can also be use as a cold blue for touch up.
Been using it for 15 years.

The Brownells fine carding wheel works great.

 

[pdembek]

Informative thread, I have a project I am working on that I am going to have to apply some type of finish to. It's a tube receiver and the front and rear trunnion's are pressed into the tube and plug welded. When applying a finish that requires dipping a part into a solution, what issues do you run into when the solution migrates into areas that were welded? Does the solution start corroding the area that you couldn't get to?

I've seen 1919's that had rust leaching out of seam where the side plates were riveted to the trunnion. Not sure of the cause and don't want want to run into the same issue on my project. I've never tried this before so I appreciate any input you guy's might want to pass along.

 

[machinist89]

Sorry I have not run into this problem yet; however, on my Lancaster build the tube receiver welds took the bluing just as well as the chromoly tube. I was surprised that the finished matched perfectly. Last night I test-drove my motorized carding wheel. I did try a dimming switch to control the average AC voltage the bridge rectifier sees, but the PMDC motor did not run smoothly. I have had good luck with other DC motors, but not this one. The variac worked well, as suggested by others. The card wheel drastically improved the timeliness of the carding process and the finish came out with a more pleasing shine to it. Steel wool is still used to finish to hard to reach areas. I run the wheel at about 500 rpm.

Informative thread, I have a project I am working on that I am going to have to apply some type of finish to. It's a tube receiver and the front and rear trunnion's are pressed into the tube and plug welded. When applying a finish that requires dipping a part into a solution, what issues do you run into when the solution migrates into areas that were welded? Does the solution start corroding the area that you couldn't get to?

I've seen 1919's that had rust leaching out of seam where the side plates were riveted to the trunnion. Not sure of the cause and don't want want to run into the same issue on my project. I've never tried this before so I appreciate any input you guy's might want to pass along.

 

[Abominog]

ORF 1919s weep rust because after the park bath they weren’t properly flushed and oiled.

How do you use the wheel on a 200 degree 4 ft long 25 lb receiver & water jacket?

 

[pdembek]

Do you just flush it out with clean water then dry and oil?

 

[machinist89]

Not there yet, but you point out one of the challenges. Just before each carding, the parts are coming out of boiling water. The small parts cool down fast enough to handle them at the wheel in just a few minutes. The top cover took a long time to cool down enough to handle, which slows the whole process way down. The water jacket and receiver will be even longer. However, it has snow twice here already. I think I will cycle from boil, to the snow bank, to carding wheel. You just need to keep everything clean through each step. I have to say that the RIG grease is really a nice product. I like it way better than Garand Lubriplate grease.

ORF 1919s weep rust because after the park bath they weren’t properly flushed and oiled.

How do you use the wheel on a 200 degree 4 ft long 25 lb receiver & water jacket?

 

[machinist89]

Christmas Blues

Merry Christmas to the Forum! I'm posting a few images of the water jacket bluing process. I borrowed a 8x8x40" stainless bluing tank from a friend for this step. As received from Albert, the water jacket was in pretty good shape, but the original bluing had a haze of surface rust. I degreased it and used lemon juice to lightly clean the brass. I found rubber corks at Ace Hardware for all the jacket penetrations. I think I mentioned this before, but I used EvapoRust to remove the original bluing and rust, and then used a new 6" fine wire wheel on a bench grinder to smooth the surface of the jacket. I wanted a finish to start with that was somewhere between battlefield pickup and spanking new. The wire wheel provided that look for me.

Here's the as-received jacket;

After wire wheel prep:

First rust cycle:

After first water boil:

Finished product:

I completed 5 rust, boil, and carding steps. At the beginning, I heated the jacket up to 170°F in my oven. After the first boil and carding, the jacket was still hot enough to directly apply the bluing solution. I used gloves to handle the jacket when it was so damn hot on the phlanges. The carding was actually pretty easy, other than the burnt fingers. The larger parts hold the heat, which makes the whole process faster. I sort of screwed up the first rusting cycle, because I did not realize the front of the jacket was floating out of the boiling water. I did this on my apartment balcony, where the lighting was not so great, with my neighbors watching on and wondering if they should call 911 on me. The many beers may have played a part in this too. Anyhoo, That left some streaking areas in the bluing, and of course, that was on top of the jacket where it can be readily seen. The later cycles made that less obvious, but it is still there. I'm good with the end result, because I was not seeking perfection. I used a steel block to weigh down the front of the jacket for the rest of the boil cycles. The block was place on the brass front cap, not on the steel jacket for obvious reasons. I'm good with the end result, even with the bit streaking because I was not seeking perfection. When I was done with the bluing, I ecoRecycled the hot rusty water by dumping it off the balcony to water the arborvitae bushes down below. The neighBs must have thought the reindeer were taken a leak! The jacket was greased with RIG as before.

i'm down to just finishing the side plate and bluing the receiver parts. I hope to have this running by the end of January.

Stay tuned! M89

 

[distshooter]

I've been starting to get ready to prepare to begin a project like this for some time now. :lol:

From what I've gathered, most people perform this operation after the gun is assembled.
I think it would be easier to perform in disassembled parts as you have done.
Of course assembling afterwards would present a problem of bare rivets.

Can anybody with experience offer the pro's and con's of rust bluing before or after assembly?