doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DIY Gunsmithing @ doublegunshop.com Rust Blueing help

I need some help here. I am trying my hand at rust blueing. I clean and degrease with casey's cleaner/degreaser then polish to bright with 400 grit wet/dry paper. I apply Laurel Mountain forge barrel brown and sit aside to rust and the metal turns blue with coppery streaks. I am applying the rusting solution with a clean 100% cotton pad in one continuous pass. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. Can anyone help?
Dave

What type of barrels are you doing? Are you trying for blue or brown? Usually the copper streaks are from the copper sulfate in the solution. When bluing this will blend in after several more passes.

Agee with Mark - card, apply another coat and see how it looks. Over rubbing can cause copper streaks that stay but it doesn't sound like you did that.

I haven't tried the barrels yet, rather I started with the trigger plate and guard. I am trying for blue. Should I apply a light or heavy coat of the rust solution? So the streaks and splotches will go away with continued applications?
Dave

use something like a foam brush or a sponge that has been squeezed out. You want as light of a coat as possible while still covering evenly. Do not over lap your passes and only apply your acid to room temp. metal.
Steve

It will get better with more coats. The first coat should look like green rust before you card it. Good idea practicing on the guard.

"...I clean and degrease with casey's cleaner/degreaser then polish to bright with 400 grit wet/dry paper..."

Unless you just printed the sequence switched, try polishing first,,then doing the degreasing.
Actually, if you don't have a particularly dirty & oily piece of metal, draw filing, polishing with grit cloth will give you a nice surface to apply the rust blue soln directly to especially with Laurel Mtn.
I wouldn't go much higher than 280 or 320 for the first attempts at rust bluing. The higher gloss will just get matted down during the process anyway. Later on you'll get the hang of being able to adjust the times, temp, and humidity to keep a high gloss under a rust blue.

The copper streaks are common with LMF blue soln.
If you over lap the soln while applying or rub it in while applying you'll usually get a copper plated effect that will still be there after boiling.
If the metal is warm, the soln will plate out while you are applying it too.
If it appears after the boiling process, it's usually from old blue not being completely removed in spots. Sometimes the newly applyed LMF will reblue nicely over old bluing,,sometimes you get the rust/copper areas appearing where old blue remains. A light polishing over the areas will usually take care of it giving the LMF a chance to bite into the steel underneath.
Old rust blue can be tough, with dried, hardened oil in the matted pores of the steel not allowing the new soln to get ahold.

A first coat of quick rust at a somewhat high surface heat on the steel can be helpful to form a base for the LMF slow rust coating to follow.
Etching the surface does the same thing. Either with weak acid on the hot steel from the boiling water tank or a very weak ferric chloride dip (less than 5%), just enough to give the rust blue soln a surface to bite into.
The latter is also used to etch for damascus pattern.

You're applying too much solution at a time. LMF is notorious for this phenomenon. You want your applicator to be barely damp, not wet. If you can squeeze any solution out of it, it is too wet.

Try a much lighter coat and see how that goes.

Dave,
I use oooo steel wool, deoiled with acetone and squeeze it fairly dry. Did you boil it after rusting, before carding? Kutter was the only that mentioned that step.
Mike

I've tried LMF rust blue solution several times, I have always had problems with it; exactly as noted above, copper streaks.

I used to make my own solutions, then I found Mark Lee's slow rust solution, use that almost exclusively.

Mike