doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Gaddy Rust Blue Formua

The rust blue formula attributed to Oscar Gaddy in the FAQ forum is typical of many formulas in Angier's Tome, however, all of those contain copper sulfate in addition those listed in that thread. Is this, perhaps, and oversight?

I don't think so. I have used Oscar's solution (more or less) quite a few times and it usually works well. Having said that, I should also add that about 10 % of barrels, the pattern jumps out at you no matter what you do, 10% the pattern will not come out for love nor money and the rest are somewhere in the middle. If the pattern is not coming out, I add a small amount of copper sulphate to the solution and sometimes that helps. It often copper plates the metal but the plating will rust away after a few hours. If in full panic about the copper, wipe it with lime sulfur tree spray which turns the copper to a sulphide and it cards aways easily (at least for me)
Prompted by a friend who also uses the solution I also tried using a much more dilute solution on barrels with tight twisted patterns and it does seem to help. Such barrels are much more difficult to develop the pattern on that the simple spiral straight lined type.
A good etching with ferric chloride between rustings seems also necessary to bring out the pattern as per Oscar's writings.

cheers Doug

Thanks Doug! I take it you've had more success etching between rustings rather than once at the beginning. I've got five sets of barrels in my shop right now of various types. Two are just for practice. From the writings here it appears that there are no hard and fast rules; You need to "listen" to what the barrel is telling you. I'll post my results when I have some.