Nickel plating a rifle barrel ?

[Sr.Galahad]

I took a chance and picked up an old Anchutz model 64 that was in bad cosmetic condition. But for the price I could not let it go. When I got home went over it close and found it is great function wise. But it looked like it had been sliding around in the bed of a pickup truck for a while. The stock had a lot of bumps and bruises but no real gouges and some steam, time, steam and TLC it turned out to have a beautiful fiddleback maple stock. The thing now is do I send the barrel and action out to have it blued, cold blue it myself or I got thinking about nickel electroplating it. I have looking into plating and it is not that complex. The long barrel might need more anodes but some testing on long bar stock would see if it might work.
Anybody ever done something like this? The electroplating process should not harm metal would it?

[deces]

Personally, I would just parkerize it, very easy to do. I have found that cold blue is not worth the effort.

[Sr.Galahad]

I thought about that but I would like a high gloss finish to it

[country gent]

How about rust bluing it. You would need to make a tank. But the caustic rust blue is a classic finish looks very good and from what Ive read on it is fairly easy to do.

[akajun]

First, how does it shoot? It doesn’t take much abuse/ neglect to make a 22 rf barrel bad
Slow moving soft lead bullets are unforgiving. I would clean the barrel very well and have someone with a good bore scope that knows what he’s looking at evaluate it. If it’s good, re blue professionally.
If not have it rebarreled with a stainless barrel from a top maker like shilen, benchmark, etc and installed by someone familiar with pin and press barrels like anschutz
Mark penrod is a good smith for that

[waksupi]

How about rust bluing it. You would need to make a tank. But the caustic rust blue is a classic finish looks very good and from what Ive read on it is fairly easy to do.

.

There is a topic that is a sticky I believe, covering slow rust bluing with a steam tower, rather than a tank.

I wouldn't nickle a barrel. It would really cut down on resale value.

[Sr.Galahad]

Before I even spent the time on the stock I cleaned it and ran a borescope down it. It was pretty dirty but when I did run the borescope down it looked great. Dropped a extra Nikon scope on it and ran some rounds and that had great results. Over 50 years ago I shot on a junior rifle team. Started with an old Remington 513T. After a while (seemed like forever, probably after my dad saw I would stick with it) I got a brand new Anchutz 64. When I was in my early 20's young and dumb I traded it in on a SKB shotgun. I later regretted that but never did buy a new one. So when I saw this one for a couple hundred I had to buy it. I thought if it was cleaned up at all at least I could get my money back out of it. But besides a couple bad spots of rust on the barrel it is fantastic. I will shoot it for a while but when my 2 year old grandson gets old enough I will be giving it to him. So I would like it to be special hoping it will mean something to him. That is partly why I thought going with nickel would really be unique. But onlt if I could get a really good finish on test pieces. However if someone had one done and had bad results like effecting the metallurgy of it I would rule it out right away. In the end I really want a nice high gloss finish on it like nickel or like on one of my older Brownings or older Smith & Wessons.

[akajun]

Before I even spent the time on the stock I cleaned it and ran a borescope down it. It was pretty dirty but when I did run the borescope down it looked great. Dropped a extra Nikon scope on it and ran some rounds and that had great results. Over 50 years ago I shot on a junior rifle team. Started with an old Remington 513T. After a while (seemed like forever, probably after my dad saw I would stick with it) I got a brand new Anchutz 64. When I was in my early 20's young and dumb I traded it in on a SKB shotgun. I later regretted that but never did buy a new one. So when I saw this one for a couple hundred I had to buy it. I thought if it was cleaned up at all at least I could get my money back out of it. But besides a couple bad spots of rust on the barrel it is fantastic. I will shoot it for a while but when my 2 year old grandson gets old enough I will be giving it to him. So I would like it to be special hoping it will mean something to him. That is partly why I thought going with nickel would really be unique. But onlt if I could get a really good finish on test pieces. However if someone had one done and had bad results like effecting the metallurgy of it I would rule it out right away. In the end I really want a nice high gloss finish on it like nickel or like on one of my older Brownings or older Smith & Wessons.

In that case send it out for re polish and blue
I wouldn’t bother with nickel

[Winger Ed.]

For one of those, I'd send it out to someone that's set up to blue it correctly.
Anything else would sort of look out of place-
like some of those military rifles we've seen that were 'sporterized' at the kitchen table back in the '50s.

[Handloader109]

Why out of place? There are a ton of nickel played guns out there and next to a blued gun most look better in my opinion. I LIKE a shiny gun. Nickel plating won't hurt the barrel at all. But it needs to be someone who will do it right.

Sent from my SM-S908U using Tapatalk

[Sr.Galahad]

Has anyone ever nickel plated something on their own?

[john.k]

You can nickle plate two ways ....electroless nickle ,or the commercial DC electric method..........for a long gun you are going to need a fair bit of chemical.....expensive chemical .......personally,for a long gun ,it would be more economic to get a plating shop to do it.........and they could also flash chrome it for you if you want shine ......nickle tarnishes quickly,and needs to regularly maintained ......chrome does not if its kept indoors.

[John Taylor]

Nickel plating adds a layer to the thickness of parts, sometimes the screws will not go back in the holes. Nickel plating was usually done on rifles that were showed at carnivals as prizes at shooting booths. I think the last time I saw any was in the early 1960s. The rifle that you used to shoot at the target was an old worn out 1890 Winchester loaded with 22 shots. The target was a little red dot and you had to shoot the red dot away with three shots. I thought I had done it once but the guy running the booth pushed a little piece of red forward when he showed me the target. And I thought I had won the nickel plated 1890 on display.

[Sr.Galahad]

So the consensus is that my best thing would be to send it in and have a good professional blueing job done? Are there any suggestions on someone to do it?

[Winger Ed.]

send it in and have a good professional blueing job done?

That's what I'd do. That's a real nice and expensive rifle.
In the long run- I think you'll be glad you did it justice.

[John Taylor]

The shop that I was using for blue went down last year, owner died from Covid. Now I'm using second amendment gunsmithing and he seems to be doing good work. His e-mail pinenut57@frontier.com