Add in the 250F+ temperatures of the salts when they hit your skin, and youre both burned thermally and chemically in seconds. As mentioned, cold bluing can be done at room temperature with decent results. on Introduction. Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 914,567 times. I wish I had known more about the process, heating (I was working outside on a 60 degree day) I may have to check with my friend to see if it needs reblued again, Im sure he never shot it. Before you start, it might do you well to mark the sight base on each side of the dovetail with a Sharpie marker, so you can see when the sight begins to move. Now securely hold your piece with whatever you have chosen. Metal Finishing Guru. Are you sure you want to heat the steel to 700F in that early step? When youre done, attach the thermometer to the tank and fire up the burner. % of people told us that this article helped them. Your tanks better be tight, your stands for the tanks better be rigid, youd better have top-of-the-line fire extinguishers (NB the plural) available to you. Mark the sharpened edge with a crayon. Youll get a dark spot right there. THANKS DG. Alternatively, You could store them in a hard case (like a pelican with a purge) and throw some desiccant packs in there as well. Were committed to providing the world with free how-to resources, and even $1 helps us in our mission. Shooting Mystery is reader-supported. Ill wait for and look forward to your article! This crucible was heated to 730C (1,350F) for up to 6hours (the longer the heat was applied the thicker the case hardening). Once you see it turn golden, the process has started and colours will change fairly quickly! The content is not meant to be a replacement for professional service advice. Heat the Steel. Ferrari installs valve seats in their aluminum cylinder heads via robot. Spray down the whole barreled action with copious amounts of WD-40, inside and out. The use of stainless steel alloy varies a lot from one manufacturer to the other and thats why the bluing effect wont always be consistent. Colour case hardening occurs when soft steels were packed in a reasonably airtight crucible in a mixture of charred leather, bone charcoal and wood charcoal. Depending on what solution you use, the tank temperature must be maintained somewhere between 240 and 310 degrees Fahrenheit. Your 700F temp is too high, IMO. Mea culpa. If you cant, just get them out of the case and allow air to circulate around them. Hot. Very helpful! Oil-free steel wool is also sold by woodworking shops. Even a fingerprint will affect the consistency of the colour. High temperatures and dangerous chemicals mean that a moment of carelessness can make you pay a heavy price. Mess. Now, using the information above, you should have little problem bluing your firearms on your own. Treating with an oiled coating enhances the protection offered by the bluing. Put all the components into the tank and wait for 5 15 minutes. Keep a grade B fire extinguisher nearby in case of a fire. That seems wasteful. After three coats, washing and drying, the finish was not too bad, considering I was (and am) a rank amateur. Its nice when something can be re-used a time or two, especially when used in diversified ways. So you said the polishing is key for the coloring process. Put 600 grit compound on a wheel, use a little too much pressure and youll be gob-smacked at how fast it can cut material off the gun. Theyll usually go in from the right, and be drifted out from the left (ie, drifting them from left to the right as the muzzle is pointed away from you). I can then get the temp to be 600F spot-on in a lead melting pot. "@type": "ImageObject", Most knives, rifle receivers and barrels are heated to at least 1200F and cooled and drawn at 490F-700F. Once it's cooled down, take the object out of the oil and place it on a piece of paper/cloth and let it set for about 20 minutes. Once you strip the blue & rust, then you can see what youre dealing with. The cross section and size of parts affect the outcome of the finish and time it takes to achieve. Larger flames produce less heat while smaller flames produce a higher heat. Thermometers and stirring tools are also needed, as well as something to heat up the tanks. List Price: $18.64 $18.64. 1. You will need:-2x containers (one of them preferably being metal for the oil)-oil -unleaded petrol/Acetone/Terpentine/Rubbing alcohol or any goo { When youre using hot blueing salts, youd better be on top of your game, or you can seriously injure yourself. Degrease and heat the items to be blued in a steel pan to about 700F. Wait for a day to let the bluing properly cure before you do anything else to it. In the nitre bluing process, polished and cleaned steel parts are immersed in a bath of molten saltstypically potassium nitrate and sodium nitrate (sometimes with 9.4 grams (0.33oz) of manganese dioxide per pound of total nitrate). The reason I ask is that when you heat steel that is in the white to 600F, you get a brilliant blue all on its own. Heating up a tank on the kitchen stove. Soft, low-carbon steel was used, but strong materials were needed for the receivers of firearms. Either that or the steel wool. Shooting Mystery is an independent website that provides content for informational purposes only. Usually, you can find the manufacturers recommended ratio in the product manual. Remove any previous finish. 2. "https://twitter.com/Shoot1ngMystery", The hot washing soda tank typically used in gunsmith shops is caustic washing soda, and if you leave the gun in long enough, youll start to see corrosion on the gun before you get to the blueing step. }. Brownells has a product that will strip blueing and rust (Fe3O4 and Fe3O2, respectively) and not corrode the underlying steel.Remove the barrel & action from the stock. Oh mas oui.Express blueing, slow rust blueing, hot salt blueing, nitre blueing, carbona blueing all are better than cold blueing. Because so many people are trying to do this sort of thing on the cheap, thats when I start thundering in my warnings about safety. For this Instructable I'm using thread cutting oil. That means 50-60 revolutions to make a foot. RF: Expect a write-up from me on Rust blueing and parkerizing in the next couple of weeks. Black iron wire You will need black iron wire to tie around any object you In comparison, rust, the red oxide of iron (Fe2O3), undergoes an extremely large volume change upon hydration; as a result, the oxide easily flakes off, causing the typical reddish rusting away of iron. While I am certain that I could do it myself, you already have all the bits and parts and stuff so it is worth my dollars to buy a gunsmiths time to have this done for me. Hunter Rising is a wikiHow Staff Writer based in Los Angeles. Probably the main one is the content of so-called "carbon, "I was looking at making a set of plate armor and I wanted to see how to harden the breastplate. His enthusiasm for handling firearms and hunting gear inspired him to create the Shooting Mystery blog. I guess Ill have to just be happy drying toilet paper. You should note that the blue layer is rather delicate so dont treat it roughly. Cold blues will react with steel at room temperature, but you get more aggressive reactions when you heat the gun to, oh, 150 to 200F. The process isnt intended for bronze. Itll evaporate rather rapidly, but still, dont whip it at cars or house finishes. This article was very, "I've been working with steel since I was a child, and reviewing these proper methods and skills makes my projects, "It surely educated me on several points. In colloquial use, thin coatings of black oxide are often termed 'gun bluing', while heavier coatings are termed 'black oxide'. Ive dealt with strong acids and strong bases in lab work, and I fear the strong bases more. This heating forms the blue on the plate. Woodworkers doing furniture finishing will use 000 and 0000 wool, and they hate oil on their wool for rubbing down oil finishes. occasionally I'll buff it afterwards. Take them out after a couple of minutes and then wipe them clean to remove excess oil. . With. Then you have to heat the metal. Cold blueing is OK for touchups, at best. Old school smiths use something called washing soda to strip oil off guns. Even at room temperature, the salts are highly caustic and will eat into your eyes or skin in seconds not minutes. Pull it out of the tank and place on a drain rack. on Introduction. Before operating your torch, read all instructions so you know how to handle it safely. All blued parts still require oiling to prevent rust. Use your torch to bring up Alternatively. The color is not oxides, when steel is heated at relatively low heats (300-600 degrees Fahrenheit) it changes colors from light yellow to a deep blue, after 600 it turns back to a steel color. Every true outdoorsmans dream! You need to constantly be adding in a bit of water to bring the boiling point back down into the range you need. Right now I'm working on excavator replacement pins! You then oil or wax over the finish when youre done. 3.3k. Step 3: Suspend the components in the bluing solution tank, However, if the bluing effect isnt satisfactory, then you can try giving the components an acid bath (using, Step 4: Rinse the components in a cold water tank then transfer them to a hot one, Step 5: Submerge the components in a tank filled with water displacing oil, Address: 4455 Camp Bowie Blvd, Ste 114 #852, Fort Worth, TX 76107. Very true. Quenching the steel rapidly cools it so the alloys inside harden together. Always back your paper when youre polishing over edges and up against features. Enjoy! It is not nice stuff. "https://theshootingmystery.tumblr.com/", Then, you can put the components back into the bluing tank and increase the temperature until you see the blued steel. I'm a professional knifemaker and use many very high-temp methods including quenching 1,600F steel in pre-heated oil - I know what I'm talking about, 'cause I still have 10 fingers and my eyesight. These include hot bluing, cold bluing, niter bluing, and so on. We have all kinds of rifles and shotguns with recievers made from non-Fe alloys again we do not give it a second though or break out the hardness tester. ", informative and did not use technical language and concepts that would have left me floundering and none the wiser. Rinse them in a cold water tank after. Again, dont mess around with these chemicals and only handle them with extreme attention. The mixture is heated to 310 to 321C (590 to 610F) and the parts are suspended in this solution with wire. Reply And then there is the difference between general care and storage vs available daily carried protection pistols living in a some sort of Holster (nylon or leather) , good, bad, take them out or leave them in? "url": "https://shootingmystery.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Shootinglogo.png" I thought there was something that could help improve the colors but wasnt sure until I came across this. I have cut and polished 4 pieces of mild steel to demonstrate different colour stages. NaOH will quickly and completely dissolve aluminum. It would be a good idea to get some gloves on. My apologies for the background noise in the first half of the video We had compressors running where I In this case cooking oil, rather than gun oil, acts to displace water and prevent rust. Polish to at least 400 grit. I just had my first experience rust browning a barrel. Thanks a lot for sharing. As a small thank you, wed like to offer you a $30 gift card (valid at GoNift.com). Sign up for wikiHow's weekly email newsletter. Cooking off the more volatile hydrocarbons leaving the heavier ones produces a different effect yet again. It had been thoroughly degreased before my first attempt, but in trying to repair a poor result, I apparently contaminated it a bit. You might also want to read our article on how to easily darken stainless steel or blacken stainless steel for more ways to personalize your gear. Make sure to check every nook and cranny of the components so that you can find any discoloration or blemishes. Alternitavely you can leave it in the oil bath to stabilize. So I buffed down the barrel with steel wool and started over heating the barrel in the oven before taking it outside to add the solution (which is nitric acid). Not every manufacturer puts bittering agents in the solution and as one poison control nurse told me: (t)here is nothing you can do and it aint the good death.. Not blessed with a climate controlled safe. it washes off with water. Heating it again to a lower temperature will not introduce additional martensite. Keep a fire extinguisher near your workstation in case of a fire. However, if the bluing effect isnt satisfactory, then you can try giving the components an acid bath (using Hydrochloric Acid). "image": { Either of these two methods is called 'hot bluing'. Brilliant blues. The differing rate of cooling for each area produced a different color creating that rainbow effect. Dont mess with hot salts. Hot NaOH is so alkaline it is great as dissolving organic materials. If you want it smoother/shinier, you can polish up to 600 grit, with wet-or-dry paper. YouTube - Nitre bluing a few gun parts. Share it with us! As I'm bluing round pieces I slowly and evenly rotate the piece over the flame to equally disburse the heat. Wipe them down with WD-40 on a regular basis. It provides the stainless steel surface with a layer of protection, giving rust and corrosion resistance while reducing potential glare as well. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for 13 in 1 Metal Shell Welding Torch Nozzle Tip Cleaner For Welder Soldering at the best online prices at eBay! Aluminium (Al) and polymer parts cannot be blued, and no corrosion protection is provided. A Pocket Sundial From a Broken Pocket Watch! Oil and grease really are the enemy because youre trying to (literally) corrode the metal. I wouldn't recommend either. Wear thick gloves so you dont burn yourself. The difference is immersion in boiling water for bluing. just fyi, the old school method of case hardening steel is to get the piece so hot that a magnet will no longet stick to it and quickly quench it in used motor oil. 2. For the process your metal should be nicely polished for the best results.The more shinier the polish the more your end result will glow. I can' If you tempered the steel with a blow torch, set the metal on an anvil or another large steel surface to conduct the heat. When youre using polishing paper, you think that 600 grit is very fine, and it is taking you hours to polish out something to 600. It can soften up some paints and plastics. Try it on some unimportant pieces first. http://cdn.spectrumbrands.com/~/media/Spectracide/Files/MSDS/SpectracideStumpRemoverGranulesSDSApr15.ashx. "@type": "ImageObject", February 20, 2016 at 16:12. It is named after the blue-black appearance of the resulting protective finish. In the automotive world this is a common practice. It was left in a flannel gun case in the back of a moist closet for 25+ years.