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

If you use a motorized wheel to card, typically it would be at slow speed with very fine wires. Too fast and/or too coarse will remove too much of the oxide that you worked so hard to achieve. Better to stick with fine steel wool in the beginning, and carding under slowly running water is easier and lets you see any spots you may have missed more easily. Use gloves or you will need to degrease again.

Very smart of you to learn and practice on an old junk set of barrels. You can practice on the same set as many times as it takes to get the hang of it. You might also want to try a couple other old junk single shot barrels before moving on to the big time, and then you will learn that sometimes you need to adjust your techniques or solutions or rusting times for different steels. Too many guys start out with grandpa's Parker or L. C. Smith and ruin a nice old gun with real potential. Sometimes you may be better off leaving remnants of deeper pitting rather than trying to get it all and removing lettering, engraving, or excessively thinning the barrel and leaving dished out areas. When you learn to do a good job, you will understand why the pros charge so much to rust blue or brown a set of barrels. The materials don't cost a lot, but it is time consuming and labor intensive. Good luck.

Make sure to degrease your steel wool. I keep several pads soaking in a jar of acetone at all times. If you get to the point when you're doing this more frequently, I agree that mounting a wire wheel to a grinder is not a good idea. I use a Brownell's four row fine wheel which I mounted on a spindle made from a threaded bolt. Initially, I mounted it on my large drill press, turning at a fairly slow speed. Now, I use it in my variable-speed corded drill. I made a simple jig to hold the barrels. I find it easier to control the speed, angle, and pressure on the barrels that way. It also enables me to reverse the direction often to keep the wires from bending. I also lightly dress the sides of the wheel with a file card after each set to keep the wires straight.

To card areas like the rib-barrel joint I use the steel wool and a shaped craft stick to get into the joint, just be careful you don't overdo it and leave streaks. Don't forget to wear gloves, but I'm sure you know that.

Good luck, prep and degreasing are the key

What rusting solution do you plan to use? My very first attempt 25 years ago was rebluing a rusty old H&R 922 revolver. I hand polished it down to a near mirror finish ending with crocus cloth. I used a home brew formula from Angiers, the 1873 Ordnance Formula, as I recall. I should have cut the solution more with distilled water, or shortened my rusting times, because I ended up with a pleasing blue-black matte finish that was not what I really wanted... a little too much "bite". I learned a lot from that experience, and I'm still learning.

Shop I got the barrel from has a bottle of Pilkingtons. I bought the barrels out of their trash can and decided to see how the cleaning up went before I jumped in with the bottle of solution.

Thanks for the tips. I'm sure I'll be back with more questions on this soon enough.

I never wear gloves, I learned to make plugs for ends of the barrels and handle them by the plugs both when applying the solution and carding;but not when boiling them.I was not able to find a fine enough wire wheel to satisfy me, even runing it on an arbor driven by different size pulleys to slow it way down.My German gunsmith friend taught me how to do it and he used a wheel with wire that was hair "fine".I just went to 00 steel wool(degreased with acetone also).For what ever it's worth, Walter taught me to apply the solution with 0000 steel wool( degreased with acetone).It was his theory that the steel wool would cut through any oil droplets that might be in the air and fall on the work.He would put a little solution in a bottle cap and wet the steel wool from it,instead of taking a chance of contaminating the whole bottle with steel wool.We use a small piece of wool and squeeze it out a little so it won't be too wet,resulting in runs.
Mike

I think set up good lighting, particularly to see the consistency of the reflection off the area you're working on. Assuming you have the material thickness to work with, you may remove pits, but if you leave a divot or contour change that doesn't belong, it might not look right even if you go through a good sequence with the finer grits. Best of luck with it.

I use Liberon brand oil free steel wool, 0000, for carding. Works a treat and doesn't require de-oiling like hardware store brand wool. On the downside it costs more (but a package of it lasts a loooong time).

Can I say that over many years of bluing and browning barrels I have found that the people who did this for a living devised methods of doing things to make their life at work easier, and not wanting to reinvent the wheel myself I copied there methods so here are a couple that will help anyone be more successful rust bluing.
Plug the barrels, clean out the extractor holes to remove any oil, prevent the browning solution from reaching places where you do not want it to go i.e. the breach end of the barrels and in some cases the barrel flats. Degrease the barrels properly.
For plugging the barrels use laboratory rubber bungs because they are not affected by heat, boiling water, or the rusting solution. But if you just plug the barrels there is a chance that the pressure build up inside the bores when in the boiling water could pop the bungs and allow water to enter the bores, and if there is any oil in them contaminate the water.
So to prevent this their solution which also cured another problem which is holding and positioning the hot barrels for carding.
Each rubber bung had a hole through the centre being a tight fit on an Iron rod which was threaded at each end. This rod would travel the length of the bore and extend past each bung by about four inches, a metal washer was placed next to the bungs with a nut at each to keep the bungs in place also compressing the rubber preventing water seeping past the rods. (1/4 inch threaded rod works just as well and can be purchased in standard lengths) fitted on the ends of each rod is a wooden handle to hold the hot barrels without burning your hands. To complete things a length adjustable wooden stand with six inch uprights at each was used to lay the Iron rods on that extended from the barrels so they could card the barrels top and bottom, also in the uprights a narrow slot was cut so the rods could drop into to enable the barrel sides to be worked on as well.
To keep the rusting solution off areas they used a Shellac/Pitch/Alcohol based mixture brushed on which was fast drying boiling water resistant and easy to remove.
Degreasing was done with a caustic mixture rather than solvents possibly because the action was to saponify the oils and greases, this usually consisted of a strong solution of Sodium Hydroxide (this is extremely caustic and will cause chemical burns) a less caustic solution is made from Sodium Carbonate (you may know this as �washing soda�) each works well if you submerse the barrels in the solution.
And just my personal preference I always card with steel wool I have tried using a fine wire wheel but it sometimes produces a patchy finish.
Finally the water you must use Distilled, Demineralised, Rainwater. Rainwater was preferred here possibly because it was free and we do have rather a lot of rain over here in Brit land.
Try to settle on a couple of rusting solutions and practice with them my personal preference is one solution with Mercuric Chloride and one without, the Mercuric chloride does speed up rusting especially if you have a dry atmosphere. Though better still by the book the reprint is not costly �Firearm Bluing and Browning by R.H. Angier� and formulate your own personal mixture for the atmosphere where you live.

Modern, water-based polyurethane is what I use to coat the bores and the other areas I want to keep free of solution.

If using a wheel, since going fairly slow is key, that's where the variable-speed drill works well.

Now, THIS is a useful thread!

SRH