doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Barrel rust blue preparation/polishing

One of my favorite metal finish pics; a custom Marlin M-94 with rust blued barrel an mag tube, charcoal blued forend tip, nitre blued screws and mag. tube plug.
A palette of gun blues.


Bench-made front sight, same rifle. Rust blued barrel, nitre blued sight with 18kt gold bead.

Just a minor question I have been curious about. Why is "carding" called carding?

It appears that the actual word "carding" comes from the textile industry in eary 1700's England. Carding was the term used to explain "separating various fibers" where wire brushes were used for this purpose.

As barrel browning became the norm during the same time frame, a very stiff brush was used to remove the brown oxides from freshly brown rusted barrels after they had sat out for 24 hours to rust and the word "carding" carried over to identify the use of the "stiff hard brush".

Soon it was learned that if they "boiled" the barrels with this iron oxide the barrels would turn black and blacking began.

Hope this helps.

Thanks Doug. I appreciate the answer. Carding rings a bell, now that you mention it, with the production of textiles. Funny how it moved to barrel blacking.

You also "card" files using a stiff wire brush to remove chips from the file teeth.

Carding was and still used in the wool industry.

Funny. I always relate the term to showing my ID to prove my legal drinking age.

Throw in morning and/or late afternoon hunting together and I'm there.

If a course provided barrel prep, polishing and dent raising and filing, not to a great depth as that might take the 5 days in itself and all the ins and outs of rust blueing it would be high on my list to attend.

My Dad was an antique dealer back home in Somerset, ..I remember he had a woold carding machine that involved a crank n several short stiff wire wide wire brushes...though we had no wool to test its worth, it was marked as a wool carding machine
franc