Blue a browned barrel?

761 Views 24 Replies 7 Participants Last post by Cheezywan, 19 d ago

Red Owl

Discussion Starter · 24 d ago

Years ago I bought a scrap 16 gauge side by side shotgun. I browned the barrel with a rust browning. I then neutralized it with baking soda. It looks fine but I always would have preferred a rust blue, or blue. In any event, is there any bluing solution you can apply on rust browned barrel to turn blue/black? Thanks.

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JBelk

· #2 · 24 d ago

The difference between 'browning' and rust bluing is the boiling in water before the carding step.
You'll need to totally remove all the old oil and/or wax from the brown. I'd boil it in TSP or a lye solution and scratch the surface with ScotchBRite so the new solution has something to rust. Heat the barrels to about 200F and wipe on a coat of rust blue solution. Let it rust (two hours to two days, depending on humidity and what chemicals you're using). Boil in clean water for half an hour then card off the rust with degreased 000 steel wool or fine SS rotary wire brush. Wipe clean, heat the metal again and and apply rust blue solution. Let it rust, boil and card and repeat until the color is right.
Oil is the enemy. If you touch a surface with a bare finger, it'll show. WD-40 used in the same room ruins the job. It's more art than science.

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jdsingleshot

· #3 · 24 d ago

I'm sure you have successfully blued far more barrels and parts than I have and agree that your approach produces one of the finest finishes possible. I am glad you emphasized the oil issue and heating the barrel before applying the solution.

After seeing a variation that uses steam instead of boiling, I will never go back to boiling. Here is a link to an explanation, though the product being sold can be concocted at home. Steam rust bluing. I think I have been using a solution of calcium chloride, but the label disappeared years ago. I mix a spoonful of the salt with enough warm water to dissolve it and add a dash of dish soap or laundry detergent to cut any oil that may have survived the washing.

Heat the barrel before applying the solution.

Wood Pipe Metal Gun accessory Trigger

It is even more necessary to heat the barrel or part before placing it in the steam chamber, because if you don't, steam will condense on the part and rinse off the rusting medium.

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JBelk

· #4 · 24 d ago

That's a fine job! How many coats is that?
My problem with steam is that I'm at a mile high. I have to have a pressure vessel to turn red rust black. My other problem is dry air. I built a pexiglass box to rust parts in with a damp rag supplying humidity.
Here's a G33-40 I did last month.

Somebody counted the recipes for rust blue in Angier's book one time but I've forgotten the number...two hundred an something? One calls for horse urine and sea salt....

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gbro

· #5 · 24 d ago

Should be able to use Exhaust Fluid(DEF) then

Darkker

· #6 · 24 d ago

DEF is roughly 70/30, DI water and Urea. Urea being an aqueous solution containing various salts, it isn't a pure and simple ingredient.

I'm sure it could be made to work, but it's far from the most cost effective.

Cheers

jdsingleshot

· #7 · 24 d ago (Edited)

JBelk said:
That's a fine job! How many coats is that? My problem with steam is that I'm at a mile high. I have to have a pressure vessel to turn red rust black. My other problem is dry air. I built a pexiglass box to rust parts in with a damp rag supplying humidity. Here's a G33-40 I did last month. Somebody counted the recipes for rust blue in Angier's book one time but I've forgotten the number...two hundred an something? One calls for horse urine and sea salt....

Re your question about how many times through the steam bath, the barrel I pictured went through twice, about 15 min. each. Sometimes takes more visits.

I wonder if there is a catalyst that would allow the conversion at a lower temperature??? Come to think of it, your water bath can't get any hotter than the steam...I'm guessing it converts the red to black oxide?? Maybe a steam chimney loses too much heat.

G33 looks very nice.

JBelk

· #8 · 24 d ago

I boil parts in a pressure cooker to get enough heat to convert to magnetite and each rust is 12 hours or more long. I used to get rusted barrel blanks from UPS in Florida but cant get raw metal to rust without a lot of help in the desert.

unclenick

· #9 · 24 d ago

jdsingleshot said:
After seeing a variation that uses steam instead of boiling, I will never go back to boiling.

This is interesting, but I am apparently missing something. I watched the video, and while they use the steam cabinet to accelerate rusting, Mark mentions boiling and mentions putting the gun in the "conversion pot," so is he not boiling still?

IIRC, the steam-to-rust approach is a variation of the method described by Howe. IIRC, Howe didn't apply anything to the steel. He prepared it and put it in a cabinet with a steam source, and he put a watch glass in the bottom of the cabinet with a few drops of nitric acid in it. The steam would dissolve some of the nitric acid fumes and expose the steel to it, which would result in producing a fine rust layer. But I believe it was subsequently boiled for conversion.

I infer from Bob's website that just using more steam performs the conversion. Does this all happen in one extended step, or is it separate? Is that what am I missing?

jdsingleshot

· #10 · 23 d ago

unclenick said:
This is interesting, but I am apparently missing something. I watched the video, and while they use the steam cabinet to accelerate rusting, Mark mentions boiling and mentions putting the gun in the "conversion pot," so is he not boiling still?

I infer from Bob's website that just using more steam performs the conversion. Does this all happen in one extended step, or is it separate? Is that what am I missing?

I may have linked to a video that is not clear or uses a different approach. There are a lot of videos.

Here's what I do. My steam chamber is a piece of 3" PVC fastened to the lid of a stock pot. There is a hole in the middle of the lid (size not critical. Mine is 1/2" IIRC).

I degrease the parts with acetone and then wash with water and dish detergent (JBelk's method is better). After cleaning, I wear disposable gloves and try to touch the parts as little as possible.

Then I swab the parts with the rusting solution using a cotton swab. I heat the parts to what I guess is steam temperature or a little more. Then I suspend the parts in the preheated steam chamber.

After 15 to 20 minutes, I remove a part and steel wool the loose oxide away. Then the next part until all are done.

If another bath is needed, I repeat the process (including the degreasing if I have not degreased the steel wool).

If I have been thorough in the degreasing, two steamings will usually produce an even deep blue/black color.

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JBelk

· #11 · 23 d ago

I just counted, I have nine rust blue solutions, some 50 years old. Angier's C-13 is still my favorite. Angiers calls it Swiss Armory Blue. It was sold by Laurel Forge years ago. Pilkington, Mark Lee, Winchester restoration, Plumb Brown, laurel Forge, Old English, Blue American...they all work IF you have good water with no metallic minerals and a sweat box.
If you have iron and/or manganese in your tap water, distilled or de-ionized water will work. Keezy Kimball in West Texas had friends melt Oregon snow and and delivered it every summer for his rust blue.

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Cheezywan

· #12 · 23 d ago

What is good water? What is the test for good water?

Some fellers I discuss important matters such as this with claim that the output of their septic-tank is potable(according to their septic-smithy)!

Seems like the whole world must buy drinking water from a bottle.

I still drink from a two-quart canteen that I fill from my well (the original bottled-water). Hangs from the drivers headrest in my truck, or my shoulder.

My thinking is:
Bluing solution needs a "baseline" that needs a standard.
Could be distilled? Could be Al Gores' septic tank?

A standard that can be reproduced consistently.

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JBelk

· #13 · 23 d ago

Distilled is the base line because it has no metallic minerals in it. Lime, is also bad. The water has to be 'soft'. Otherwise the blue will be mottled or discolored.
The same goes for hot dip water but its not a critical.

The steam process linked to sounds like cold blue with a steam bath to me. I can't see how that process can give the physical properties of rust blue.
Oxphoblue and commercial oxide treatments like BlackPhos is an oxide of phosphorus more like Parkerizing than blue. It's quick, easy and looks good for a while but doesn't offer the protection of true rust blue. Test with a dab of Naval Jelly.

The reason I suggested degreasing a browned barrel with lye or TSP is because oil 'goes into' rust blue and wont wipe off with acetone.

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Cheezywan

· #14 · 23 d ago

Soft vs distilled.
Distilled is pure H2O I think? Soft is minus most minerals I think?

To get the bluing you fellers do with how you do it, I'd tend to be particular.

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jdsingleshot

· #15 · 23 d ago

"The steam process linked to sounds like cold blue with a steam bath to me. I can't see how that process can give the physical properties of rust blue. "

Not at all. The steam process uses nothing but a salt solution. If allowed to dry and kept dry nothing at all would happen to the steel. Any cold blue solution turns the steel blue-black on contact.

The dried salt solution of the steam process does all its work in the presence of and because of the steam. It seems that the chemical result is exactly the same as the slow-rust/boilng method. It does seem hard to believe, to those of us who have done the painstaking, time-consuming traditional rust blue. I don't know the chemistry, but it seems to produce black oxide without the preliminary rust.

Cheezywan

· #16 · 22 d ago

I sure wish I knew how to do that. Butt I don't!
I love skilled smithy's!

JBelk

· #17 · 22 d ago

Larry Potterfield at Midway has a great video how to rust blue.

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jdsingleshot

· #18 · 22 d ago

JBelk said:
Larry Potterfield at Midway has a great video how to rust blue.

But Potterfield doesn't use steam. His videos, however, are very well done and nice to watch.

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Cheezywan

· #19 · 21 d ago

I value my firearms more than to trust me to work on them at that level.
I've not watched Larry yet, butt have seen others.
Is fascinating.
One thing I do have here is humidity. It likely will become "tropical" here before very long. My everyday hand-tools sometimes rust as I use them here. Keep the oil-can handy.
Steam rising from the pavement as the sun comes out after a shower.
Break into a "raining sweat" at just the thought of work.
Work a little, lather-up, work a little more to rinse.

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JBelk

· #20 · 21 d ago

I was raised in such climate and feel like I'm swimming when I go back to visit. The air is heavy and wet and gets worse in summer.
Surely you can find an old 22 pistol that could use and nice hand polish and rust blue. This one was found in a leather holster that had mostly rotted away in the woods with a 6" sport barrel. I bought it for $20 and made a target-type barrel for it and stoned it flat, polished it nice and rust blued it.
Such a project only needs a SS pan to boil in, steel wool, juice and a few bucks in abrasives.
It's well known that any gun you work on yourself is automatically better than anything else.

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