Animal Mother
Member
A little over a month ago a purchased a Ruger Mark III, and while the pistol has been capable of phenomenal accuracy, one disappointing issue that I’ve encountered is the very thin blued finish on the gun. I have three small areas where the bluing has already worn off, and I’ve used two different types of cold blue to attempt to cover these areas but I haven’t seen the cold blue have any affect at all, so I wonder if I’m not doing something correctly.
The two products I’ve tried using in separate applications are Birchwood Casey’s Perma Blue and Van’s Instant Gun Blue. The steps I’ve been taking to cold blue are as follows:
1. Degrease the metal with denatured alcohol.
2. Heat the surface with a hair dryer.
3. Apply the cold blue with q-tip (Perma Blue) or a new toothbrush (Van’s), and let the solution sit on the surface of the gun for a few minutes.
4. Wipe off solution, and then wipe down with water, dry, and then oil.
I understand that it should take multiple applications to bring the cold blue level up to a similar blue/black level as the original bluing but after a single application I can detect no difference in the color of the exposed steel. Is that normal? Should it take multiple applications for the cold blue to begin to show? Currently, I’ve only applied the cold blue to a single area (under the barrel) because I’ve read that the cold blue can sometimes alter the color of the surrounding bluing so I was using the least visible area to spot test the bluing.
These are the three areas where the bluing has worn:
This is the spot under the barrel where the bluing has worn; it came like this from the factory, and is the area where I’ve been testing the cold blue.
I mounted the factory scope base on the gun one afternoon to see how I would like using a red dot and scope, after I removed the base, these scratches remained.
The bluing has worn at the end of the barrel due to the gun resting in the factory plastic case.
The two products I’ve tried using in separate applications are Birchwood Casey’s Perma Blue and Van’s Instant Gun Blue. The steps I’ve been taking to cold blue are as follows:
1. Degrease the metal with denatured alcohol.
2. Heat the surface with a hair dryer.
3. Apply the cold blue with q-tip (Perma Blue) or a new toothbrush (Van’s), and let the solution sit on the surface of the gun for a few minutes.
4. Wipe off solution, and then wipe down with water, dry, and then oil.
I understand that it should take multiple applications to bring the cold blue level up to a similar blue/black level as the original bluing but after a single application I can detect no difference in the color of the exposed steel. Is that normal? Should it take multiple applications for the cold blue to begin to show? Currently, I’ve only applied the cold blue to a single area (under the barrel) because I’ve read that the cold blue can sometimes alter the color of the surrounding bluing so I was using the least visible area to spot test the bluing.
These are the three areas where the bluing has worn:
This is the spot under the barrel where the bluing has worn; it came like this from the factory, and is the area where I’ve been testing the cold blue.
I mounted the factory scope base on the gun one afternoon to see how I would like using a red dot and scope, after I removed the base, these scratches remained.
The bluing has worn at the end of the barrel due to the gun resting in the factory plastic case.