Marlin '94 bolt, do NOT do this...

My 1894 CB was purchased in mid to late 1990's and lived on a steady and nearly exclusive diet of real black powder. Always thoroughly cleaned with HOT soapy water and Ballistol to lube/preserve. No problems. Years ago an online friend, John Kort, sent me a generous sample of his rendition of period correct RNFP bullets incorperating some design features I had previouly used on the PRS bullet. He gave detailed loading instructions and shooting advice (I needed that, long range is not my game). So, off I went to a public range with more distance than I have at home. My daughter assisted with loading so that I would not know which bullet I was shooting, John's design or mine. I practiced with the rifle using a 10 power scope as John recommended and then went for the two 5 shot groups IIRC at 200 yards, whatever the max room we had. His bullet was shooting tighter, my shooting was nothing to brag about. I posted the targets to John. Life go busy for me and I did not shoot that particular rifle again for several years. I got it out to shoot with my son and it was jambing, failure to feed and failure to extract; the extractor was partly frozen. No biggie, I got to plink with it some. I cleaned the rifle, tearing it down totally with exception of drifting the pins out of the bolt, that extractor pin was smaller than any drift I had. So DO NOT DO as I did, I put the bolt in my heated ultrasonic cleaner with a pint of water and a shot glass of Hornady Ultrasonic Case Cleaner for about 20 minutes of cycling. Well, the extractor was free, it looked clean -- too clean, given that the blueing was nearly totally gone and blotchy. Lubed it up and put the rifle away. I planned to fix the finish over that winter... forgot all about it. About 10 days ago, a couple of years of non-use of that rifle, I decided to shoot it. Noticed the ruined blueing on the bolt. I wanted to try some semi-wad cutters to see if my rifle was one of those with the updated throat that would cycle them. It would cycle NOTHING! Extractor totally frozen. Yesterday, I purchased a nice pin drifting kit and Lyman hammer. The gap in the extractor spring was cemented with a hard glop of black fouling. No rust and PB Blaster cleaned the bolt and extractor. I dried the parts and lubed for assembly -- function as good as ever -- butt ugly finish on bolt. So I dismantled the bolt again and re-blued the bolt body with cold blue. Better, not great. So do not ultrasound clean assemblies or blued parts in case cleaner. Oh, and the rifle feeds SWC bullets very well...

prs

A guy brought in a nice Marlin and a Kimber 1911 that had something similar happen to it. Evidently there is a new orange based simple green available, and he had used that in his ultrasonic cleaner to clean these guns. Both had the bluing mostly removed and it had even damaged the anodizing on the Kimber's aluminum frame. Don't do that either.

Check the labels, a lot of the citrus cleaners (maybe all) use citric acid as an ingredient.

I have personally seen a Walther GSP .32 S&W Long 25m CISM rapid fire pistol go into an ultrasonic cleaner Simple Green with an anodized black frame and come out with a matte silver frame. Talk about clean!

Citri-Strip. Potent stuff but gentle on old hide glue bamboo fly rods. I'm not surprised if it was a citrus type cleaner and it took off the blue.

I lost the bluing on a percussion revolver by soaking the parts in dish washing detergent.

I re blued a Browning M1935 for a customer years ago. He had been eating cherries while he was out shooting and didn't/couldn't wash his hands. Two days later the pistol was covered with fingerprints where the blue was removed by the fruit acid.

Many years ago a friend of mine was hunting in the rain with a brand new Benelli auto. When he returned home he dried the gun and thought he oiled it. He had used rust remover instead of gun oil, bluing is rust and the remover worked as advertised. He sent the gun back to Benelli to be refinished. It might have been cheaper to have bought a new one.

BB

I did that with a S&W 28. It looked like it had been cold blued at some time and was pretty worn so I cleaned it up and had the local gunsmith hot blue it for me. I had been shooting it and had a new sonic cleaner that did wonders on all I had cleaned with it, since in the parts go and all the blueing was gone. I got some Brownells Oxpho blue and didn’t use that cleaner for anything blued again.