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Joined: Dec 2008
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David:

I think you need to use a round pot that is shaped the same as the burner and doesn't waste the heat.........Watch the Nitre Blue video again...... Your burner looks big enough to me.....

Doesn't look like the 'stump stuff' is melting quite right...?..........

Clean/cool the parts in a bucket of water, polish and then oil the parts after they are clean and cool (I wax mine).

Hope this helps.....

Best,


Doug



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Doug, The flames where comes up the sides and you are most likely right in getting a bigger round pot.
The crystals were melting and then the liquid started coming through the film of crystals starting at the sides. I stirred them with that piece of brass filler rod you see on the other burner. I did this until the whole thing turned liquid.
The color as described in another post was dark, it lightened up also as described in that post.

The water quenching seemed to be better as it took that film of solitified liquid off. The oil quenching left the film on and to get it off I lightly heated the parts with a propane torch and then ran them under water. The stuff came off easily with a scrub brush. Polshed with a rag.

Why do you think the trigger guard came out blotchy? Maybe because it was on it's side resting on the bottom of the pan.?
I think the screws came out decent, more black than bluish.
Also do they all have a matte finish when removed from the bluing solution?


David


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Originally Posted By: JDW
Why do you think the trigger guard came out blotchy? Maybe because it was on it's side resting on the bottom of the pan.?
I think the screws came out decent, more black than bluish.
Also do they all have a matte finish when removed from the bluing solution?


David:

Probably because the impurities in the 'stump stuff' had not yet burned off or because you hit the trigger guard with oil while it was still hot.....or an uneven temperature....you should let your stump stuff burn off for an hour or so before using it the first time.

The parts would have been more blue had the temp been constant and probably higher.....again, a large round pot covering the burner should do the trick......

You will need to play with it a bit to define your process with your specific set up, always the case......when you get the temperature set and constant the parts will come out with more shine...... also the better the prep polish, the better the final finish .....

Cheers,


Doug



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Thanks Doug. Headng to the store for a round pot, hopefully maybe a cast iron one.

I do think the temperature should be higher, and hopefully a round pot will catch the flames better and hold the heat.

Let you know how it works out when I get going again.


David


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JD, When fully up to temp the pan will have a slightly amber colored fluid in it, no globs of unmelted salts.
My burner is rated at 10,000 BTU,under a round stainless steel dog dish.
When first immersed in the salts it will congeal on the part due to its lower temp,preheating the part will help reduce this. As it comes up to temp the salts will melt back off and bubbles may appear, these must be dislodged or they will cause spots. Any oil on the metal will cause splotches. The gunk after quenching is congealed salts that will rinse right off under warm water. HTH Robert


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Robert, great information. At slightly lower than 600 deg., the salts started to turned amber colored, at 600 deg. the salts were a nice amber and everything was liquid. The temperature would not go higherthan 600 the whole time. Doug stated he thought my burner was big enough, but the pan should have been round to cover the burner. I agree with that now.

The quenching in the oil did result in some congealed build up and I just ran it under cold water, didn't work. Heated it slightly with torch and then flushed with water, better. I will try the warm water.
Right now looking for a round pan, and the stainless dog pan like yours might be it.

I buffed the parts using some rouge and the triggers came out nice, the one screw that I made came out good also. The trigger guard, not bad, and I'm not sure if I will do that again. Still have to do the for-end metal and that will be the one part that hopefully will come out good.
I will post the results.


David


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Metal has to be absolutely clean. Cleaner than you would accept for hot blueing purposes.
Don't let it sit around after final polishing. Even an unseen to the eye oxidation starting to form will cause a poor blue finish.

Insulate the sides of the pot you're melting the salt in if you can. We used to use the all purpose asbestose paper. But since that stuff is more hands off than a hypo on the sidewalk, there must be something else available now.
A steel heat shield around the sides with a layer of insulation helps dramaticly in heat up, stability of temp and being able to reach the higher temps with a common heat source.

Have some absolutely dry and oil free fine steel wool handy for the small air bubbles that will sometimes form on parts in the salts.
Sometimes just lifting the parts and carefully dunking them back and forth into the salts will break up the bubbles. If needed, swipe gently over them with just a wisp of the steel wool snagged around the end of a new clean bronze cleaning brush on a pistol cleaning rod for easy handling. It can get hot quick too, but you're wearing your gloves right!

If the part doesn't color to your expectations, it'll need to be polished up again to be redone. Trying to touch up a spot or two never seems to work out well.

Plain sodium nitrate works fine. Ammonium nitrate works well too. Most any chemicle salt that'll melt around 350 and not boil till after 900F can be used.
The Brownells stuff works good. I've used it & plain sodium nitrate both for many years for straw & blue all the way to a charcoal blue look at 825/850F.
Works nicely as a spring temper medium in the lower ranges.
Ammonium Nitrate was used in a pinch a couple of times and it worked just fine too.

Some metals will just not blue well with the process due to their alloy content or heat treatment.

We used both nitre and at the time the start of a charcoal blue process at DTR.
Charcoal blue was done with bone char (same stuff from the CCH process) and a Mobil synthetic oil (can't recall the #) in the place of carbonia oil of the original process.
The charcoal blue process was done in a self contained canister type device we fabricated. Air tight with the exception of a tiny hole in the removeable end to allow the smoke out and (hopefully) no atmosphere in.
It was placed inside one of the existing CCH ovens.

It was more a mimic of the later carbonia oil process of the American Gas Furnace Co., than the earlier real charcoal bluing process.
Two different processes giving similar results. One replacing the other as more labor & time efficient in industry in the early 20th Century.

The canister had to be manually rotated a 1/2 turn every 20min IIRC. The batch ran for 2hrs to complete. Results were at times spectacular, other times not acceptable for a number of reasons. Usually air leaking into the canister around the cover gasket somewhere, moisture in the char/oil mix, improper mix, parts not clean,temp not correct,,lots of variables..

But we were on the right track. Then it went into secret mode for refinement like most things there.
That was in the early 90's. I don't know what process(es) they use over there now.

Like CCH, it's not a terribly complicated process. Just one that needs constant repetition once a system that yields good results is found.

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Kutter, thanks for the loads of information. I will copy that to what I have already.

I went and got a round stainless dish, about 9" in dia. and 3" deep. Mounted my old hardware on it and had removed the old salts from the other pan. This was 3 lbs of salts and I bought another one just to make sure I had enough. When it all melted I barely had enough in there, (where the heck does it go).
Temperature still would not go above 600 deg. So now I'm blaming it on the burner (what else?).
After everything melted and when the bubbles stopped, it was a nice amber color (as described by Robert-Highstrap) and you could see to the bottom.
I did the for-end and it came out like the trigger guard. The knuckle area after I buffed it didn't look bad but I know I need higher temperatures.
I will experiment more. I put the gun together, looks a whole lot better than when I got it. Still a "klunker" but one that I won't mind being seen with. I rusted the barrels but only 4 rustings, 3 boilings and 1 etch. Could have gone more, but good enough for this application.




I wish to thank everyone for their valuable information. I will keep on trying and will post when I get right.

Last edited by JDW; 07/28/11 09:16 AM.

David


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JDW
I just read the last page, only, on this thread as it caught my interest. I'm not experienced in this process, but something struck me as a possibility for your "blotchy" part. You mentioned you used rouge.

I recall from my past an admonishment about using wax based rouge for polishing parts to be blued. My understanding is that it cannot be cleaned completely since high speed buffing with wax rouge puts the rouge into the surface. Others will know better than I on this point. If you don't get any feedback here, call Brownells and ask their tech assistant line.

Last edited by Chuck H; 07/29/11 08:42 AM.
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Chuck, I used the rouge after I nitre blued them. The polishing helped somewhat and did made the triggers look good. The trigger guard and for-end, I believe it was from not having a high enough temperature.
I polished all the parts with emery cloth.

The one funny thing is I made a few screws to replace the buggered ones taking it apart. I had to drill them out to remove them, could not budge them with the drill press method and broke a few bits trying. Anyway I used drill rod as I didn't have any mild steel big enough to make them. The top lever plate screw nitred ok, the front trigger plate screw would not take the bath, stayed shiny even after a repeated cleaning and re-dipping.


David


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