Bluing

[mlheppl]

Dr Rob's post got me to thinking about the guns I've refinished. I just put a laminate stock on my remington 700 in 270. The stock looks great, but when I dropped the barrel and action into the stock, it made me realize that it's time to reblue the barrel.

I've tried Birchwood Casey's cold bluing in the past, and didn't like the results. The bluing turned out patchy and didn't match the factory bluing very well. What products/methods should I use to get a professional looking bluing on this project?

 

[stevelyn]

Brownell's Oxpho-Blue has a very good reputation for quality results short of hot bluing. According to their literature surface prep is minimal. It can be applied over a slightly oily surface with no need to remove rust and the finish is as tough as nails.
Been wanting to try it myself but they won't ship it here because of dumb@$$ hazmat regs.:banghead:

 

[Steve Smith]

Moved to the correct forum.

 

[Clark]

I have been experimenting with cold blues.
I find that every piece of steel seems to react a little differently.

These days I wear disposable gloves and my first try is:
1) Degrease with Simple Green
2) rinse
3) dry with kleenex
4) rub on G96 Gun Blue creme* with Scotch brite scour pad while spinning
object in the mini lathe. Pinch hard enough to rub off some of the blue
but not all of it.
5) Degrease
6) rinse
7) dry
8) apply oxpho blue [with cue tip or scour pad in lathe]
9) Do not rinse, but cover with motor oil.
10) let stand over night [it gets really dark overnight]
11) wipe off
12) re oil
*Sometimes I use Dicropan T-4 for the first blue, because it is really
dark, but not resistant to steel wool.

The advantage of my system is there is $15 invested, it takes 10
minutes to do, it gets really dark, it stands up to rubbing.

This may not be as durable or pretty as factory, but in 10 minutes
effort, I get 95% of the way there. You want it nicer? do it all again
and get 97%.

The idea is to get a dark but wimpy blue in the micro crevices, and a
resilient but not so dark blue on the tops of the micro ridges.

The beauty of applying the cold blue with an abrasive, is that all that
will rub off is already rubbed off.

 

[Clemson]

If you are going to the trouble to refinish the stock and polish the metal, do yourself a favor and forget about cold blue. You can send your metal parts to a smith to dip in the caustic salts for $35 - $50 if you have already done the metal prep. If you are bound and determined to do it yourself, use a rust blue like Brownells' Dichropan "IM" or Herters' "Belgian Blue." They require a tank to boil the parts in water, but they make for beautiful and durable finishes.

Clemson