Patina

[Kiehlroy]

Hi guys, I'm trying to age my Colt 1861 navy to give it a nice worn look. I've
already aged the brass with bleach and baking soda and stripped the blue off the steel with vinegar. The metal is in the white and real shiny. I would like to darken it and rough it up a little but I'm wondering if there is a way I can do this at home without buying a patina kit. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[MCgunner]

Shoot it daily and draw it from leather a lot for the next decade, not a problem...

 

[Old Dragoon]

Buy a bottle of plumb Brown and follow the instructions(at least 3 coats then with 600 Grit take the brown off till it looks like an original. You can get the looks of originals on all the auction sites. Find one you like and there you go.

I don't know of any "Kitchen" items that will age iron.

 

[Third_Rail]

No easy way, no. Plum brown is cheap, though.

 

[Kiehlroy]

Bleach. I reasoned that if bleach ages brass then it might do something similar
to the gun steel. It works! In less than 15 minutes there was a nice coating of rust. Now I just need to decide how long to keep it in and then how to clean and seal it.

 

[Old Dragoon]

I would let it stay on for a while (overnight) card it to remove the scale then rinse it off and dry it, re apply, let it set, card, rinse, dry, repeat till it is the color you want then kill it with olive oil. or some oil not petrolem based. We used to use whale oil back before they quit killing the whales. Bacon grease will work too but it has corrosives(salts) in it. You can seal it with beeswax afterwards. The olive oil will seal it too.

 

[Duncaninfrance]

Sealing

OD
Would 'BoreButter' work the same way cos it's natural?
Duncan

 

[Old Dragoon]

I do believe it would. Next one I do I'll try Bore Butter. I see no reason that it wouldn't work. We use it to season our bbls.
I just use olive oil, the cheapest I can find, though I have used some expensive Virgin olive oil but only because I didn't have any of the cheap stuff. I cook with the better stuff when I can. I find it cheapest at CostCo. Don't think they have CostCo in France do they?

 

[Third_Rail]

You may have oxidized the metal too much, but since it's BP, it shouldn't matter that much I hope.

 

[Rex B]

I'd let it rust

..lightly as you have done, stop the process, clean it well, then use the plum brown. I did that years ago to a smokepole and it turned out great. Looks 100 years old.
You can also follow with bluing to darken it if you like.

 

[eagle24]

Look down a few threads to my thread "My accuracy with the 1858 Rem...". My gun is about a month old. The day I got it I sanded all over with 600g wet/dry followed by 0000 steel wool. I was planning to rust brown my gun this summer, but I kinda like the way it looks now and will probably leave it alone. The brass will take care of itself in a short time. Just wipe the fouling off and don't clean and polish it when you clean the gun.

 

[sjohns]

in that movie Paler Rider, those monkeys in town ahd all varieties of guns if you look carefully. LOTs of them were patinaed yet it was supposed to be a period movie..

that's a big duhhhhh

 

[Carl N. Brown]

patina, n., a good excuse to avoid obsessive cleaning and polishing

It only took a couple of years for my brass
frame cap'n'ball revolvers to develop a patina
from normal wear and exposure to BP.