Blueing Question

A couple of years ago I came across a good deal on a Hawkin type muzzle loader made in Spain. It’s in really good shape, but a portion of the blueing is gone. Maybe 25%. It’s not at all pitted, just white. Now that I am thinking about shooting it, I thought I would do something to touch it up.

My question is, if I attempt to touch it up with cold blue, should I do it up to the line of good blueing or overlap it some. Probably it’s best to remove all the blueing and cold blue everything, but I don’t want to get into a bigger project until I decide how well I like this gun.

Thanks

Why not shoot it as is first then if it performs and you like it give it the tlc to the level you want. his allows or tuning and adjusting with out worry of damaging the new finish also. This is how I would do it and then if its a keeper I would srip polish and refinish all the metal and wood.

If this is going to be a hunting gun you might consider one of the bake on finishes for durability. Its much easier to get an even finish doing the whole barrel than patching.

Sound advice from the Gent. Problem with cold bluing is that you'll usually get discoloration where the cold blue meets the hot blue. Could be brownish, or maybe even kind of rainbow like oil on water. This is because cold blues are usually acid based and hot blue is alkali and the two don't mix. I have 3 Hawken-type rifles, and really, in looking at them, there are few blued parts, mainly just the barrel. Of course they all aren't like mine, I realize, but mine have brass butt plates, patch boxes, trigger guards, and case hardened locks. So, basically just the barrel. With some preparation you could probably redo the barrel with Oxpho Blue. Alternatively, given access to a stove with a good burner and large oven you could brown it, which is probably more authentic than a blue. Also, as mentioned in the preceding post, bake on (need the oven again) or spray on finishes can prove attractive to some folks, and they are durable. I have to confess to being partial to a blue gun, myself.

DG

Why not take a couple days and rust blue it , it really is a nice blue . Never had luck with cold wipe on blues for touch up .

I do not consider it a very big project , cleaning the old blue off and then degreasing and on with the rusting solution and then I give it a tea kettle steaming and hang till its time to do it again .

Rust and blue from reading the muzzle loader and building the kentucky rifle books were all finish that was used , I think the in the white were probably let patina on there own if not blued or browned .

Country Gent is probably right to shoot it as is. That’s what I was planning to do, but after taking it down off the wall, where it was for two years, it looked pretty bad. I took off the barrel and cleaned it up with a carding wheel today. It looks a lot better now. The rest of the metal parts have a case hardened finish or are brass. They are in good condition. I’ve always wanted to try my hand at hot blueing. Maybe this will be the time, if I like the way it shoots. It will only be used by me for target shooting. Its .45cal.
Thanks for the input.

Great advice above. Definitely not cold blue. Think about something like Cerakote or Brownells Aluma-HydeII.

Brownells Oxpho-Blue
https://www.brownells.com/gunsmith-t...1072-3869.aspx

It is not the typical cold blue

you might want to consider what I did with one of my sons rifles did a Parkerizing on it.

If it turns out to be a shooter; consider browning it. IMO blued muzzleloaders just don't look quite right. Browning isn't hard to do at all. Birchwood Casey's Plum Brown is what I've used- but I don't know if it's available in France.

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Originally Posted by Texas by God

If it turns out to be a shooter; consider browning it. IMO blued muzzleloaders just don't look quite right. Browning isn't hard to do at all. Birchwood Casey's Plum Brown is what I've used- but I don't know if it's available in France.

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Actually, early muzzle loaders were pretty much all blued. Browning didn't come around in general use until around 1800.

Greg,
I use to run tanks of Oxynate#7 and if you like the colors they produce they are real hard to beat - but unless you have a few to do, what a PITA. From there I moved on to a damp cabinet and rust bluing, now that's even a bigger pain, especially if you do the fuming on top of it to make finishes durable... In the past 4 years I've changed things up a bit and for the effort to results ratio, Mark Lee's bluing and browning solutions have been un-paralleled. Start by following the instructions to the letter but you'll find depending on a few things like altitude and tap water sources there are some short cuts you can take. With not much more than a piece of 3" diameter PVC a little longer than than your longest barreled action, a porcelain canning pot, hot plate or stove, some steel wool and acetone - a high quality bluing job happens in less than a couple of hours, doing a plumb brown job takes a little more effort in my case -but I made one turn out :wink:.
Greg

I’ve used the Brownell’s liquid and also the Birchwood Casey (I think) paste. Neither of them actually blues the steel by oxidation, IIRC, they precipitate a selenium compound on the surface of the metal that looks blue-black.

This will work, or not, as a touching-up, depending on your level of determination. What I do is get a can of CRC chlorinated QD electrical contact cleaner, and degrease a piece of 0000 steel wool and the surface on the gun I want to touch up. I haven’t had equal success with acetone; the technical grade mostly available has some impurity in it that leaves a film. Reagent grade ought to work, if you can get some.

Once degreased, I daub the bluing solution onto the metal with a Q-tip and rub it in with the steel wool, let it dry, and polish off the excess with light swipes using a paper towel. Then I daub some more of the bluing on and rub with the same piece of steel wool, let dry, and lightly polish again. I repeat until the coating doesn’t seem to be getting any darker, then wipe down with the paper towel and some Marvel Mystery Oil.

There will be (perhaps) a little inconsistency in the color match on the part that spills over the border into what’s left of the real bluing, but this is much less noticeable than the shine from the original holster wear or whatever.

I was taught this by a lady at the gun club who had done a whole single shot shotgun barrel in this manner, using up most of a tube of bluing paste in the process. Her fingers were probably blue for a week, but the color was very dark and very uniform, and none of it had worn off again, as far as I could see. Previous to that, I hadn’t bothered much with the touch-up blues, for all the reasons already mentioned by the posters, but since, I’ve done a lot of small items like sights, and worn spots on larger parts in this manner.

I have had some good luck with Birchwood Casey Super Blue I have used it on many small parts but wouldn't hesitate to touch up a barrel with it since I just did it to my Monkeyberg barrel where there was a scuff mark on it. Its is NOT perfect but it looks alot better than it did and it's not like you can't go back over it later, or get the whole barrel reblued.

For an investment of $10 you can't really go wrong and you can't screw it up beyond simple repair if it doesn't work out the way you thought it would. Matching any bluing is a crap shoot, and everyone here should know that.

BC also makes a really good Blue Remover if you need to start over. Or you could use it first and do the job right. that way there wouldn't eb any problems with matching the color as it would all be the same.

The only way to make it perfect is to have it professionally Blued. However that gun should probably be Browned anyway? A nice Plum Brown is a very attractive finish, and you can do that with another Birchwood Casey product,,, as well as remove the old blue before you start.

They make all kinds of neato stuff and you can get surprisingly good results if you read their instructions.

Something to look at.

Randy

I have plum browned , cold blued , and rust browned and rust blued , and will rust and brown or blue from here on out it is not that hard and can be done a lot easier and with minimal time if you do it for the climate and circumstances you live in .

Cerakote makes an air cure version of their product. Applying it is a process in and of itself. I have done several dozen guns with it, has a learning curve.