David,
I have a gunsmith acquaintance who claims to have spoken with a former employee of Turnbull. According to him Turnbull uses 825F. He said the employee claimed that Turnbull used what he described as a "yellowish liquid salt bath" to charcoal" blue and not charcoal. The former employee would not tell him what the salts were. The "yellowish liquid salt bath" sure sounds like nitre salts to me. I have no way of knowing if this is true or not. It was just what I was told second hand.
Nitre bluing at 825F just to say its charcoal bluing seems like a waste of money in my opinion. You might as well be actually charcoal bluing the parts at that temperature and if they were going to say one thing and do another why not just save yourself some time and money and black oxide the parts at 295F and call it charcoal bluing. Im not calling anyone a liar or sticking up for anyone, Im just interested by the story.
Channing Will
