The bluing on one Winchester 21 barrel set that I reblued about 2 yrs ago does not seem to be wearing as well as a factory bluing job. I know the metallurgy on these barrels is different than mild steel found in many English and European barrels; I think the Winchester barrels are higher in carbon or nickel. They look great when they come out of the shop for a while and then they quickly fade at the breech end especially. I have used Pilkingtons and Mark Lee Express products with about the same result. I wonder if there is a more durable technique. The receiver I sent out to be hot blued and that, of course, is much more durable and it is holding up well. Thanks, Gil

And adding the other platform--would the techniques mentioned below apply to Model 12s--both the barrels and receivers? I'm not sure if the metallurgy from one is related to the other. It seems there are some inconsistencies/variations in the metallurgy of the M12s over the years.

Belgian blue.

I have had good results with Brownells rust blueing.
bill

Hi Gil,
It could well be that the chemicals are changing they certainly have here in the UK, we had no worries for many years then the chemicals we were using were just not as good anymore it has taken five years to find a way around it. Usually a good rust blue will wear better than a hot salt finish. Do you use your solutions full strength or water them down a bit ?

On Win21 bbls,,Express Rust will someties result in the color fading a bit or turning reddish especially at the breech. The lower corners seem to be a prime candidate for the problem for some reason.
Express Rust I have used mostly Mark Lee formula for the last 30+ yrs.
The over all color can sometimes show a little reddish hint to it in brite sunshine as well, though not always.

I can't ever think of times when this occured when I still used the old Belgian Blue (from Herters at the time). That Express Rust bluing soln had the mercury bichloride compound in it and it surely worked well.
But I decided after some years of using it and others with the merc in it to drop those.

Perhaps the Mark Lee, which does not have any merc compound in it is at fault for lack of a better word for not agressively rusting the 21 bbl steel as well as the older solns.
Just a guess of course.

(An aside,,the return of the Belgian Blue that Brownells put back on the market some time ago I believe still uses the mercury compound. When Brownells placed it on the market, I did buy a small bottle thinking
maybe it worked as well as the old formula but had been re-formulated to leave the mercury out of it.
A simple experiment of swiping some of the soln onto a piece of polished brass that had been warmed up a bit lead me to believe the Mercury was still in the 'new' Belgian Blue.
When I wiped the soln over the warm brass, the surface was plated with silvery Mercury(?) justas the orig stuff would do to brass, gold, silver' copper , etc inlays or elements on the gun pars.
..The ads said the new stuff was same as the Old Belgian Blue,,guess it is!
I was just surprised that in the Age of Green and the extreme hype of any Mercury component in anything OTC that it would remain so. )

Back to Win21 rust bluing.

With the Express Blue process,, a slightly coarser finish on the steel,,coarser than I like for a Win21, seems to help the Express Rust process (Mark Lee at least) avoid the later discoloring or lack of color in spots.
It's no secret that a coarser finish is helpful to a rust blue anyway.

I've found that if I polish the bbls to any gloss I care to and then Slow Rust Blue them, the color problem do not appear.
For this I use Laurel Mtn slow rust bbl blue soln.
I don't let very heavy coatings of rust to form before boiling the bbls. Barely rusting so that you have to look closely to see the coating on the metal is enough to give you another layer of color. More rust is just that and muddys up the tank water. Plus the longer it sits and rusts, the more matted the steel can become.

I did have some problems with after rust using L/M rust soln in the past. Tried about everything to kill it. Some worked better than others but none really worked totally well.
I've settled on 2 now.
One is to right after the final carding of the last coat of blue using the L/Mtn soln, I then warm the bbls or parts back up and apply a coating of Mark Lee Express brown soln. Then immedietely into the boiling water tank as a normal Express Blue cycle.
5 or 10 min in the water, then out and card as normal.
For some reason after that one cycle with the Mark Lee Express,,,no more after rust from the L/Mtn.

The other that seems too simple,,is to complete the Slow Rust Bluing with the L/Mtn.
After final carding and while the bbl or parts are still warm,,wipe them down with a cloth patch dampened with linseed oil.

Now I happen to have been using what is called Refined Linseed Oil .
The stuff I use comes in small cutsey bottles for oil painting artists. The brand name is Windsor & Newton. There's other Art brands as well, probably the same? but this is what gave me results.
It may have additional stuff in it beyond what the big metal can off the shelf at Home Depot has. So perhaps that has something to do with it's sucess in this venture,,don't know.
I can remember using hardware store linseed (BLO) in the distant past as an after bluing treatment with no real success as far as combating after-rust.

I wipe the parts down and leave a thin even coating of the oil on the surfaces. The warm metal will make it an easy task to achieve. Then hang the parts for a couple days.
Yes the oil drys on the surfaces but will come right back off again with a followup wipe down with a clean cloth dampened with a decent gunoil. I use CLP as it's handy, but RemOil has also worked.
Very little black debris on the wipe down cloth and no after rust.

I only very occasionally do I rust blue barrels now though I do touch up the odd worn spots on my own guns. I did stop barrel bluing for a couple of reasons toxic Mercury Salts and other rust bluing solutions available where extremely slow and did not give that best English blue colour I liked. And I do mean slow because the formula I used up till the Mercury is bad bad bad for you publicity, I used a gun trade rapid rust blue formula turning the barrels from the white to blue and finished in less than an hour. I do still have a quart of the solution enough to blue about a hundred barrel sets, though it is so toxic I have arranged for a Toxic chemical disposal company to dispose of it for me because of the quantity.




I would not give out how to use this formula because of its high Toxicity though you can still read the label, hard to consider now it was the go to express rust bluing agent for well over a hundred years, people just did not realize how toxic mercuric Chloride is. This bottle was made up by a local Pharmacist in the 1970's. So this is just for historical information only definitely not to be tried.

Bill: Is that the one labeled "Brownells Clasic Rust Blue" and comes in a 4-oz brown bottle? If that is the stuff, I might try it. Gil

Kutter;

Thank you for your well written description of your experience. I am certain that it will be useful to many of us.

As to modern day boiled linseed oil and associated problems/concerns----about 20 years ago the late Jack Rowe told me that he had had some boiled linseed oil (that was heated a bit from his "flaming tee shirt" stock bending process) damage the color case hardening of a gun. Jack then investigated why this happened and said the he learned that boiled linseed oil was no longer made with a boiling method but was using chemicals and that the chemicals included some chlorides, and that is what damaged the finish of the color case hardening. After that I started doing as Jack did and bought Raw Linseed oil.

Regarding the prep/finishing aspect, I usually stop with #320. Maybe stop with #220?

No, 220 will not give you the finish you want on a set of 21 barrels. If you want a deeper bite from the rusting solution, higher humidity, warmer temps or longer duration will get you there. You have to be careful not to get too aggressive through, you can get small pits if you are not careful.

I've had some issues using express type bluing solutions in the past on both Model-21 barrels and a couple of others as well.

The problems I've experienced were areas that looked translucent/thin, brownish or reddish especially on the breech end of the barrels. I called & talked to Mark Lee about these issues and he told me that the first application of the solution is the most critical and the barrels need to be evenly warmed before the solution was applied. He said that after you do your first boil to be sure to examine the barrels under a bright light or take them out in the sunshine and if there are any areas that are thin, translucent, off color or bright metal to polish those areas back down to bright metal with either 320 grit sand paper or green scotchbrite & then apply the solution to those areas again & re-boil.

He said if you don't take care of these problem areas after the first boil, they will only get worse with the more applications & cycles you make.

I've found that for me these express solutions are great for small parts, but I never did get the hang of getting a set of barrels done right with them. I started using Laurel Mountain forge browning solution and doing barrels the old-fashioned slow rust process described in their instructions and have had great results ever since.

My opinion is the express solutions have a learning curve to them and an experienced person who uses them on a regular basis will learn the work arounds for problem areas as they occur. As a part timer hobbyist. I feel that the slow rust process using LMF is much more forgiving and easier to use in the long run.

To continue the conversation, I added the Model 12 to the discussion because I have not had much success bluing Model 12s--either the barrels or the receivers from various vintages. They usually look pretty good when finished but don't stand up to the test of time when rust blued.

Gil I can tell you who not to send it to.

I'm probably not going to send any of this out(just because I don't learn anything by sending them out ), but I'd like to have your take on who not to send them to if I ever did want to do that. You might use the PM feature of this. Thanks, Gil