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Horrible experience with Plum Brown

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mrfritz44

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So, about 12 years ago I refinished a TC Hawkins barrel with Plum Brown and loved the consistent, deep brown purple finish I got with it so I went ahead and just used it on my Woodsrunner barrel.

Five coats later and the result is the horrible finish in the picture, a blotchy mess, and that's after some vigorous steel wooling.

I jumped on the internet to see if maybe I did something wrong only to find the ingredients for PB have changed and hardly anyone recommends using it now. UGH!

I'm looking for recommendations here on next steps to achieve the deep brown purple finish on my Hawkins.

Any advice?
 

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As an internet person I have not had a bad finish with PB yet. I follow the directions on the bottle, the critical part is to keep the metal clean and have even heat. A clean pair of cotton gloves will keep your hands from getting oil on the object. Do you allow the parts to cool between coats?
 
Phil Coffins said:
As an internet person I have not had a bad finish with PB yet. I follow the directions on the bottle, the critical part is to keep the metal clean and have even heat. A clean pair of cotton gloves will keep your hands from getting oil on the object. Do you allow the parts to cool between coats?
Click to expand...
I did..... followed the bottle closely. That's the depressing part. I used latex gloves instead of cotton.
 
5 coats seems like a lot. Uneven heating will cause blotches. Barrels need to be uniformly filed or sanded fresh before anpplying and obsessively degreased. I never use steel wool for this unless it’s a soap pad. That’s one of my favorite degreasing tools.
 
Plum Brown has never been a favorite of mine. It's difficult to get the barrel evenly heated. I gave up on it years ago and started using Laurel Mountain Forge solution for both browning and rust blueing. May take a little longer but If I follow their directions I am sure of the outcome.

my .02: polish back to bright metal and start over with Laurel Mountain Forge.
 
Well it pained me to do it but I took your advice rchas and sanded the barrel back to raw metal. On my way now to get some Laurel Mountain.

For reference, here's a picture of the Hawkins I browned with PB years ago. I guess the mercury they since removed did the trick in the old recipe from what I'm reading.
 

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mrfritz44 please let us know how the Laurel Mountain browning solution works out. I also used the Birchwood Casy original plumb brown years ago (1970ish) and got a wonderful plumb brown finish that I love. Never tried the new formulated stuff. I've heard too many bad things about it.
 
Scale it back with steel wool and don't make any decisions on your next step until done with that and see where you got with scaling it back.

Because of the heat requirement BC Plum Brown is a poor choice for a rifle barrel anyway because of the target object's size and the need to get it uniformly heated to the proper degree. I've used PB on pistol barrels because they're small enough to put in my oven and get uniformly heated to the proper temperature before applying the solution. Can't do that with a rifle barrel. LMF is a better choice for browning a rifle barrel, but not the only choice. I just wouldn't use PB for that because I just can't meet the proper application requirements with what I have to work with. You can't expect good results if you can't provide the proper environment for application.
 
Last edited:
Phil Coffins said:
As an internet person I have not had a bad finish with PB yet. I follow the directions on the bottle, the critical part is to keep the metal clean and have even heat. A clean pair of cotton gloves will keep your hands from getting oil on the object. Do you allow the parts to cool between coats?
Click to expand...
Even heat and clean is important! I used acetone to clean my parts and never had a failure yet!
 
A cheap plywood box with wet towels and a 100 watt light bulb in it will do wonders to brown or rust blue barrels and parts. Suspend the barrel on wires threaded crossways in the box.
 
I have had some great results with PB, but over the years I have found Wahkon Bay Tru-Brown easier to get consistent coverage and results with.
 
mrfritz44 said:
So, about 12 years ago I refinished a TC Hawkins barrel with Plum Brown and loved the consistent, deep brown purple finish I got with it so I went ahead and just used it on my Woodsrunner barrel.

Five coats later and the result is the horrible finish in the picture, a blotchy mess, and that's after some vigorous steel wooling.

I jumped on the internet to see if maybe I did something wrong only to find the ingredients for PB have changed and hardly anyone recommends using it now. UGH!

I'm looking for recommendations here on next steps to achieve the deep brown purple finish on my Hawkins.

Any advice?
Click to expand...
Tried Plum Brown and it seemed to be nothing more than a top coat rather than a durable rust/blue conversion of the steel surface. I could be wrong, but didn’t care for the end results with Plum Brown.
 
Adventures in browning take two......

Just put the first coat of Laurel Mt Forge on the barrel so we'll see how it goes.

If you used this stuff before and have a picture of your barrel could you please post it and tell me how many coats you applied?
 

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rchas said:
Plum Brown has never been a favorite of mine. It's difficult to get the barrel evenly heated. I gave up on it years ago and started using Laurel Mountain Forge solution for both browning and rust blueing. May take a little longer but If I follow their directions I am sure of the outcome.

my .02: polish back to bright metal and start over with Laurel Mountain Forge.
Click to expand...
I’m just the opposite, I’ve had lousy results with Laurel Mountain Forge. I’ve had much better results with Birchwood Casey Plum Brown.
 

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