BLUE rust bluing

[firebrick43]

Most bluing I have seen is actually a black/blue or todays guns black

Last night I watched the movie Appaloosa and the 8 gauge punt/shotgun was a vivid blue that glowed especially when set down on the marshals office. Several old guns I have seen this bright blue color on older rifles in museums. I assume this was a rust bluing? The only bright blue hot blued guns I know of was the colt anaconda/ python but the cost to set up hot bluing is not worth it but the rustbluing other than the carding wheel look very doable since I have everything else already.

I have fireblued screws to get that color but what is the trick to rust bluing to get that color? Is it a specific solution?

[Stevie]

Pilkingtons rust blue is blue

[nascarkent]

I think They call it carbona blue . Check it out on google.

[Old Caster]

Belgian Blue is blue also and it is easy to use and cheap and long lasting. Herters used to carry it and I used it in the 50's when I was about 13 years old without help and the double stevens shotgun I refinished still looks good. The metal has to be brought up to temperature by boiling water. Imediately after lifting from the water the liquid blue is applied by an applicater. A copper wire around a cotton ball works well. As soon as the metal cools a little it must be heated again by the water. After the entire surface is coated it is removed and rubbed with fine steel wool. After about 5 or so times reheating, recoating, and steel wooling (called carding) the metal it will look good and can be removed and oil rubbed into it. Watch it for several days because it will dry out and rust easily. If it starts to discolor at all steel wool with oil again until it quits. Not long ago I refinished a friends Colt 1911 that had a front sight silver soldered onto it and I only expected to just make it look better. Only the top about 2 inches back was messed up. I sanded with 360 grit and put on the Belgian Blue and it looked almost perfect which was way more than I had hoped for. Unless one looked closely, the seam from the fix to the original was invisible. This might be the same stuff that Pilkintons has but I got mine lately at Brownells and I think I paid about $35 for a pint. If I could do it when I was 13 with limited recources, anyone can do it now. Likely no one will have to build a fire in the back yard and put their gun in a gutter with the ends bent up. From what I have heard, this was the bluing used for all doubles in those days because regular bluing would ruin the lead solder that held the barrels together.

[Bent Ramrod]

The references I was using said that if the solutions used in the slow-rust process were weak enough, and if the timing of the boiling and carding was exact enough, the black oxide particles that remained on the metal surface would be so small that they would only reflect the high-frequency parts of the light spectrum, i.e., the bluish highlight.

They must have been talking about homeopathic levels of acids and rusting agents and rusting times to the nanosecond, because typically all I get are deep blacks. The only time I can get a blue color is by using copper sulfate in the rusting solution. This plates out copper on the part, allowing you to see where you have swabbed, and typically the thin copper wash gets diluted by the growing oxide layer with successive passes of the rust blue. However, if I swab the part with a solution of sodium, ammonium or hydrogen sulfide a pass or two before the final one, the copper sulfide produced lends a blue highlight to the black color. Whether it's worth putting up with the stench is kind of a judgement call.

I built up a rifle on a Stevens Favorite action and rust blued it using the copper sulfide trick on the barrel; hopefully the photo shows it up. The receiver is black, the telescope is blackened brass.

[firebrick43]

That is the blue I want Bent Ramrod! I am sure in the right light that barrel is gorgeous!



Guess I will have to read up on some chemistry "yuck". Here I thought I would never use it.

Thanks every one!
Jay

[Dave Bulla]

Ya mean like this?

(7th post down) Hadn't been on that forum for ages but remembered that fella captchee doing a build along where he blued with bleach I think. Came out real nice but I couldn't find that post.

http://www.tradrag.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=2628