Anyone have tips on artificial aging?

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twaits

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Hi all. Someone on one of the forums gave me a recipe once for artificially aging reproduction revolvers. I thought it was to let the gun soak in a plastic back with onions, salt and ketchup...or something like that. The poster claimed it would give you nice pits in a pretty short time.
Anyway, has anyone here tried their hand at artificial aging?
Some gun companies have been making guns artificially aged for a while now but they never look real. They always look artificial.
Some of you might remember the snubnose that I aged. I just beat the hell out of it in my basement. Hammered sandpaper into it to simulate pitting. Stripped and reblued it several times until I sort of achieved a patina.
I'd like to see if anyone else has tried this and if so how they went about it.

Here's mine:

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artificial aging - I was going to say just have a teenage daughter, but that wouldn't have been a helpful answer to your question, so I'll just sit by...
 
ROFLMAO :D :D :D

OK well I have one too and the man is right!

Now as for metal products..., acetic acid is a good source, as it is slow, so doesn't get away from you. Acetic acid, which is vinegar, beads up, so you need something to help hold it in place..., and I like plain, yellow mustard. Just finished aging a flintlock using it.

Bleach makes a pebbled surface and can get away from you fast. Plumb brown, nitric browning solutions, and other chemicals are very toxic, so I prefer something less dangerous.

The metal should first be properly polished as it would've been for bluing, or in my case for sale "armory bright". It bothers me when I see flintlocks sold "browned" and the maker left the lock and other parts as they came from the manufacturer with a surface that was obviously cast, not forged. :banghead:

You then simply apply some mustard (the cheapest you can find - no need to use Grey Poupon) with a cotton ball or cotton swab, and allow it to dry. It will go blackish brown, and you take a tooth brush and water to remove it. It will "stain" the metal, and you then repeat this until you get the desired effect. Go too far and simply polish off the stain, and you can reduce the amount of staining where the gun wears against the holster or your hand, with a little polishing.

For brass, just some BP mixed with water applied with a cotton swab. Darkens pretty quick.

LD
 
mykeal said:
artificial aging - I was going to say just have a teenage daughter

Never a truer statement made!!!:neener:

My youngest daughter is 26 and the oldest is 32. My prayers go out to those of you who have yet to experience a teenage daughter for yourselves. I won't spoil the surprise but I will give you some hope. For the most part, their brain cells will start to grow back sometime in their early twenties. Be patient and try to limit your alcohol intake to only 7 days per week during this time.:banghead:
 
Funny, I've spent my whole life trying to keep my weapons as clean and sharp as possible. I never gave it a thought as to how to age the surface and such. This is a real learning tool for me here. I would have never thought that food products would age the metal. Thanks as now I know yet another thing today that I didn't yesterday...food to age metal, I would have never thought of that......fasacinating!
 
for carbon steel you can apply a patina with plain old yellow mustard, the kind you put on hot dogs. it works well on knives that are carbon steel, so it shoudl work with carbon steel gun parts! for hammers and triggers and such you can give them a nice finish by heating them up with a blowtorch and then dropping them in oil, however don't do this to anything that will need to keep it's temper like barrels, cylinders, springs, etc. especially parts that will contain an explosion otherwise you will have a grenade with no timing mechanism :what: then again why on earth would you want to do that to a spring? it's not like it is visible! haha! take care and God bless America ~Levi
 
Thanks all for the helpful techniques. Now I just need to go find a cheap used cap and ball gun and go to work!
 
Phil - if your daughter's friends, especially the male ones, don't know by now that your wife is a national champion with a pistol, and you're no slouch either, now would be a very good time to start publicizing it.

As for your daughter, well, just be comforted by the fact that tens, in fact hundreds of thousands of fathers have made it through this time intact and are actually better off. As the man said, their brain cells WILL grow back. All you need to do is remain calm no matter what, and learn to smile when the urge to scream comes on. It will get better. Beer helps. Bourbon is better.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I have no children myself, but all my brothers, sisters and in-laws do. I therefore qualify as an expert. We've been host to several 'cooling off' and 'He/she doesn't understand me' sessions.
 
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Vinegar is very popular and so is bleach.
There are some good tips along with some photos in these threads below:

"antigue-ing" a repro revolver?

http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=399585&highlight=bleach

sublink: http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=276371&highlight=walker+shoe+polish

antiquing BP revolvers

http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=367657&highlight=bleach


jamesbeat Post #7 said:
I've also read that bluing a part and then dipping it into household bleach will make it rust nicely. I read about it on a knife forum, where the guy was using it to get a heavily pitted surface on his blades.
Maybe a shorter bleach bath would cause a nice thin film of rust instead of pitting...

http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=483126&highlight=bleach

Bleach works on brass too:

http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=193604&highlight=bleach
 
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Ya know. come to think of it. Around my place the only thing aging here is me! And I don't go anywhere near mustard!!
 
Fellows meet The Ladies

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[/IMG] Ant no ageing going on round here till it's time. I'll just set on the back porch and wait for the fellow to come looking. :neener:
 

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Twaits, not being disrespectful here but you posted the picture so that give's permission to people to comment on it...That piece of s*** 'snubby' picture you posted is absolutely the ugliest and and most useless piece of s*** I have EVER seen on the THR and believe me I have seen some total wrecks on here....
 
"One trashed Pietta!!!"

See the experiment that Ferret did to an 1860 Pietta in his thread Experiment with "curing" and rust!!. He ended up creating what in his own words was "One trashed Pietta!!! Nicely trashed, even though I do do say so myself...."

Make sure to see the photos of it in posts #12, #20 & #21:

http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=190512&highlight=bleach
 
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wrapped up the barrel in thin cotton string, plugged bore and nipple threads with wax, sprayed down the cotton string with bleach and let it sit for an hour and a half, removed string, lightly washed barrel in warm water with baking soda to stop rusting, heated barrel lightly and then oiled it down with Barricade.
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Frontier ,

THAT is pretty. Did you wrap it solid or did you leave spaces between the string wraps?

Looks like an old damascuss barrel in many ways. Neat.

-kBob
 
tight and then you go through by hand and just pull apart the rings of string. The dark spots are were the string/bleach made the tightest contact and allowed deeper rusting.
 
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