Has anyone used steam instead of boiling when doing barrels? I have a rather nice setup for steaming objects up to 36" in length and wonder if this could be substituted instead of setting up a boiling tank which my shop just does not have room for right now. If so did you need to adjust you process much? I femember one of the factories using both dry and wet heat which I took the later to mean steam in their barrel finishing.

Many seem to feel it works better than boiling. There is some discussion at http://www.rustblue.com/
There is an interesting discussion of steam blueing at http://forums.accuratereloading.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/9411043/m/9471048012

I'm currently converting from boiling to steaming. I figure it will be easier to deal with leaky ribs that way. I'm tired of dealing with errant drips and the faults they create.

I still use the wet/dry heat method for rusting, the steaming will be the substitute for the boiling tank.

The nice part about using steam, is you can use tap water and you only need to heat up a quart or so instead of however many gallons your tank holds. wait till you have an obvious plume of stream coming out of your pipe hang the barrels inside and you are good. You don't even have to plug weep holes. I like it much better.

Coincidentally, my refrigerator was on the blink, so I had a repair man over yesterday. As he was working, he pulled out, what looked like a mini hand held vacuum cleaner. I asked him what it was and he said it was a steamer to melt the built up ice.

It made me think of this thread and begin to wonder if something such as the mini steamer could be rigged to work for the steam bluing.

The use of steam instead of boiling had me interested, especially for the previously mentioned purpose of avoiding issues with voids in solder joints and such. Not being in water avoids water getting in the barrels.

I have several barrel sets to do soon and i plan on trying out steam and seeing how the results are.

I normally use a 40" stainless tank over a pipe burner. I am going to build some stands for inside the tank that will suspecd the barrels and also put the tank cover on. That way the barrels will be up out of the small amount of water in the bottom of the tank. That shoukd get the job done.

I've been using an old fashioned tea kettle to steam small parts, or spot steam a problem area that needed touch-up.

Not been at the process long, and never had a tank for boiling. When I decided I wanted to try it, I just went straight to building a steam chamber.

4" diameter PVC pipe with a removable top and a toilet flange for a base.
Flange is bolted to the lid of a stock pot (would like to find an old pressure cooker).
Pot sits on a propane camp stove.

It works fine as a rusting chamber too. After I steam, the water cools down while I'm carding that just put it back in the chamber for the next rust cycle. When I'm ready to steam again the barrel is taken out and hangs while the water gets to a rapid boil again.