Hey all, I've not posted for a while. I have been doing rust bluing for about 5 years now and my black iron tank is looking pretty sad. Can I use a stainless tank for boiling?

Yes

A stainless tank is well worth the extra money if you are going to be using it a lot.

I have been using a SS one for some time. Works much better than the aluminum gutter I was using☺️

I like my black iron tank from brownell's, but over the years it has scaled away quite a bit and getting thin. I'll have to blue a few more barrels to afford the SS tank from Brownells though... I yiyi..$175.00

Stainless is nice.
If you have an iron one and the rust and scale is getting bothersome contaminating the water prematurely, you can line it w/ aluminum foil.

If done very carefully and used with extra care,,it will work just like a stainless tank.

Use the extra-wide, heavyduty foil (18 or 24"?). A one piece job of lining the tank is done.
Careful not to tear the stuff. The ends are just tucked in X-mas wrap style. The top edges folded over the tanks edges.
Water weight will push out the wrinkles so don't worry too much about that. Avoid placing objects directly onto the bottom, you don't want to tear the foil.

Works just like a stainless tank.
It does take extra care in emptying. I used to bail it out till almost empty, then carefully dump the rest. A liner lasted several bbl bluings before I replaced it with another one. Just another sheet of foil after all.

Better than the (crusty)old iron tank,,which was one step better than the 36" fiber-glass window flower box heated w/2 electric hot water tank elements hooked up to 110 I used before that.

I finally did get a stainless tank about 20 yrs. But it's amazing what you can accomplish when you have to make do with what you have.

I built my stainless tank. 7" X 7" X 32" long. It took one piece of 12 ga. stainless 22" X 32" with four 90 degree bends. There are two 1/2" outward bends to stiffen the sides at the top. Then there are two 7" X 7" end pieces MIG welded on, with a stainless handle at each end. Another piece of stainless about 8" X 33" makes a lid so the water heats faster. It's a pretty simple thing to build, but I had a friend with a shear and brake and a MIG set up to weld stainless. You might want to check a few local fab shops and price having one built before forking out $175.00.

I just ordered a stainless tank from an outfit here in Canada. Looks exactly like the tank Brownells sells with exact same dimensions only $50.00 cheaper. Last time I checked on Brownells they had them listed at $199.00.

Stainless steel is fine for boiling in rustbluing or cleaning or oil in hot bluing; but do not use it for caustic salts in hot bluing.
Mike

I was using a regular iron tank, the only drawback was that it wasn't wide enough for 32" barrels. I found a lightweight 8" flanged stainless cylinder at my local scrap yard. I then self-tapped the flanged end to the top of a pressure cooker I also found at the yard. I sealed the flange with JB Weld before I drilled the self-tappers through the flange. I modified a turkey fryer stand by replacing the burner with a high output wok burner, running on natural gas. I adjust with a ball valve, the output is so high I can make sure I never lose a boil. The tank is set up vertically, and can hold two barrel sets at a time. It's easy to remove the barrels by their hangers and hang them up to dry nearby. It works well in the basement, I also installed an exhaust fan and made a hood from a scrap wood frame and aluminum foil.

I started out using it for longer barrels, but found it so easy to use that I now use it for all barrel boiling.

Ken

I just put it on my Christmas list....I have good kids.

Mike what issues do you have hot bluing in stainless? I hot blue small parts in stainless all the time.

I hot salt blued entire guns in a stainless tank from in the mid 1960's until up into the late 1980's & never had any problems with the tank. I had just started my machinist apprenticeship & took over the bluing operation of a machinist in the shop who did gunsmithing on the side. He had the tank made & had used it successfully for some time before I started using it.

Mark,
The former local gunsmith (and a friend), who spend many years at the Army Advanced Marksmanship Unit,building rifles for world class shooters, then spent many more years in his own shop cautioned me against this.He had experience with "spotting" when he tried it. I don't know if this was in one of the several Army shops he worled in, or his own shop. I also don't know whether the tanks were made of 200, 300, or 400 series stainless steel. I considered his advice as authoritative and accepted is experience as true.
Mike

For what it's worth, I hot blued guns for many years, and used some nice stainless baskets for holding small parts. Occasionally there would be one or two parts in the basket that came out white, no blue at all. I would take them out , swish in Brownells rust remover diluted, back in and they would blue fine. After switching to black iron screen baskets, the problem went away. I was using Brownell's salts.

It is not a very scientific test, but the results seem to indicate something.
Lets hear other reports.

I use stainless tanks for all my cleaning and boiling when rust blacking but have a mild steel tank for caustic after getting some coloured sheen on a couple of parts which I'm told was down to a galvanitic reaction. It was greeny blue or dark red tint which showed in certain light . Quiet odd really, I don't understand how it happened but the plain steel tank cured it . I had my tanks made in a local fabrication shop, works out pretty cheap, plus you can decide on the depth and width.