doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Barrel blacking using browning solution?

Please forgive my ignorance on this, as I am not a barrel browner and don't have the know how to do it properly. But, I do enjoy creative experimenting and sticking my toes in places they probably shouldn't go. So, I was experimenting with Mark Lee's browning solution yesterday, and after applying 8-10 coats using heat in between and carding with steel wool, and then boiling with a bit of logwood chips, the barrels came out a beautiful more or less solid black color, with dark purplish plum undertones. These were damascus barrels, but I'm curious if this process has ever been used to blacken steel barrels as a standard process? The color really looks marvelous on a gun with dark colored wood, and I see no real downside compared to traditional rust bluing, other than a slight difference in color. Just wondering if this is a viable alternative, or am I just being a contrarian {again} and there is a downside I'm not aware of?

Is what you are describing not traditional rust blueing? Apply solution, rust, boil, card, repeat. I've never used logwood for fluid steel, but it sounds interesting.

Technically, I guess you're right eeb. It is rust bluing, just using browning solution rather than rust bluing solution. I'm just curious why it isn't done on steel barrels, at least not that I've heard of.

Both rust browning and rust bluing solutions are accelerated rusting solutions, and there are many formulas used for rusting barrels. It is the boiling step that converts the red oxide (ferric oxide) to a black oxide (ferro ferric oxide). The process is used on fluid steel barrels for bluing, but not with the addition of logwood chips, and of course, there is no etching step as is done with Damascus. You might find it easier to card if you do that after your boiling step.

Bbl Browning Soln,,Rust Bluing Soln,,,,They are just marketing names for the most part.
As long as what is in the bottle can cause the steel to rust,,it can be used to brown a bbl, or if you then boil it,,it can be used to blue the same bbl.

One of the most used cold rust blue solutions, Laurel Mountain Forge is actually marketed as 'LaurelMtn Barrel Brown & Degreaser'.

What ever, it's just a name.

L/M was originally targeted at the Muzzle Loader builders,, so the 'Bbl Brown' name.
Another,,a quick rust brown, Birchwood Casey Bbl Brown, was one of the best quick rust blue solutions around (untill they reformulated & elliminated the mercury bichloride from it)

As far as boiling/carding every coat,,or every other, or only after the last,,it's just different techniques.
As long as you get the desired results, that's what count.
There is really no 'one way' to do this.

I used to use Laurel Mtn. for browning, and it worked very well for me. One day I poured a coffee pot full of boiling water over the barrel after applying the solution to the hot barrel and got the very same beautiful blue/black you referred to, with the plum undertones.

SRH

Stan, did you allow the barrel to rust, or did you simply pour hot water over the barrel right after you applied your solution?

eeb,

It had been about 24 hrs. since the previous application of browner, Laurel Mtn., and I just decided to heat the barrel with boiling water instead of a propane torch, which is how I had been heating it before applying the solution. I didn't plan this, it just happened.

Seems that pouring the boiling water over the barrel (I held it vertically and let the hot water run down into a bucket) did the same thing as an immersion in boiling water. Amazingly even and uniform, too.

SRH

steam works too....

The rusting solutions create ferric oxide layers, and when you boil the barrels it is converted to a ferro oxide which is blacker. Boiling in Logwood(hemotoxalin) it attaches a purple-black color to the ferro ion.
This is very similar to what the old Baker solution does when used on steel barrels. If ferrous sulfate is added to the boiling water or/and the rinsing solution it also will help define the damascus pattern more when scrubbed with fine steel wool.