I normally don't do damascus bbls...but I have an LC Smith 10 ga that really needed a bbls refinish with nothing much to lose (yes, this is the controversial aspiring duck gun but so far I haven't found a recipe for 3" steel in 10 ga and I am too busy to cut down hulls) so I decided to give it a go. I do rust blueing and have that down pat. Used Laurel Mountain solution after talking to the company that makes it. Followed WW Greener's process. After about 12 rustings & dry cardings using straight solution and OOOO steel wool, no etching, bbls were a little on the dark side but attractive with a fairly decent contrast. Would have passed for a reasonable amateur job as is. But per Greener, I boiled them for 3 mins (I was reluctant to go 5 as WWG suggests because I thought that would black them based on my blueing experience) in water with logwood chips and CuSO4. They came out black and white! In retrospect, this was to be expected, don't know why I didn't trust my own experience on that.
I took a set of W&C Scott bbls that were also through 12 cycles and put them in the hot but not boiling logwood bath after first giving them a quick etch in weak FeCl3 (1/2 cup Radio Shack solution in 7L of water, I figure that's about 2% I think) because the contrast on this set was not as good. They came out black too...also 3 mins, this time not boiling but still steaming. And they also look pretty good but this is not what I had in mind.
I didn't dilute the browning solution for the subsequent rustings as WWG says this is only necessary for B&W process. The LM solution is fairly strong so that's why after 12 cycles I stopped.
I decided to rust the Scott bbls one more time to see what happens. The LC bbls are on standby pending results of this experiment.
I did notice that the logwood chips with CuSO4 turned the water blackish purple...not red as I thought it would. Perhaps that was the mistake? Greener says you can use "soda" instead of copper sulphate, but "Soda" could be a lot of different things...carbonic acid (washing soda), sodium bicarb (baking soda), sodium hydroxide (caustic soda).... Logwood is supposed to be red in acidic solutions, purple in alkali...but my boiling tank is carbon steel and the Fe in the steel acts as a mordant and turns logwood dye deep black anyway. Maybe this logwood bath has to be stainless?
Angier apparently says to soak the bbls in logwood solution after boiling and letting the solution cool a bit first. Maybe this would have worked.
Where did I go wrong? And why bother with that elaborate Gaddy process for B&W when my very simple method seemed to work fine? OK, the contrast is not stark, but it's elegant. The bbls look rust blued from a distance but you can clearly see the (fairly tight) figure on the LC. And no fussing with etching, copperas, boiling after each carding etc etc.
