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.

 

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.

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.

 

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?

 

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....

 

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.

 

Should be able to use Exhaust Fluid(DEF) then

 

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

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

"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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

I might try a hammer or pliers first. I've read your posts regarding a fingerprint and start over stuff.
Only firearm that could use refinish right now is my trusty single-shot 410 gopher-blaster. The frustration-factor of reassembly makes me think it looks better than it does. It works fine, and the gophers don't seem offended.

 

I started rust bluing in W. Colorado from a well that had water fit to set fence post in. It was almost rusty concrete. I had bought a big pile of tag end 1018 bar stock at an auction so chucked up a few in the lathe and spun polished enough to experiment with several bluing solutions, water sources, and boiling techniques. Water doesn't get hot enough at 8,000 feet to get 'blue'. More a chocolate color. I must have blued a dozen or more times on those bars trying to get it right. Setting up the process at 6200 feet next to a deionized water source solved it.
I'll add here that Herter's had the VERY BEST 'express rust' blue ever seen. It was called Herter's Belgium Blue and great stuff. A good rust in ten minutes so a set of barrels could be done in a couple hours and REALLY tough stuff. My Whelen was blued with it in '77 . The only wear is the floor plate which was hot dipped.

 

I believe somewhere on this board, there is (or was) a thread with a post about rust bluing in a car with the windows rolled up in sunshine and humid conditions. That was a good read.

I have a pressure-cooker, but have only used it to steam-clean black-powder stuff. I'm under 1000 feet here.

Thanks for your encouragement.

Maybe?

 

You need nothing but a stew pot for the stove to boil parts in, no pressure needed. Pliers would be a great experiment and give a good indication of wear resistance. We're seeing more and more 'black oxide' treatments on tools of all sorts but they're 'too' black and dusty looking to suit guns, IMO.
That G33-40 pictured above was done by a commercial black oxide treatment and downright ugly! I re-polished it and rust blued it (again) and got it working again. Somebody had bead blasted before the black treatment and jammed glass balls in the 'sealed by tapered pin' three position safety so it quit working....
Here's before and after pictures. More black is not always more better!!

 

Roger the "no pressure needed". I just used the cooker as a source for steam. Not bluing (or cooking) related at all.