Help with first rust bluing

[amurican]

Alright,I need a hand on my first rust bluing experience. I have a .54 GPR kit, my first kit and so far its been coming along great. I'm using LMF Browning and De-greaser. I started off by drawfiling and then sanding down to 220 grit. I crafted together a sweat box that seems to be working, I just boil water and put that in to increase the humidity. I'm in Wyoming so I need it. I made a PVC trough for scalding and I'm using distilled water. I'm basically following the extended LMF directions that I found at the top of the builders bench.

I've gone through about 4 rounds of applying the browning, scalding and carding. Everything except the barrel is done now but the barrel is the problem. I'm getting small brown/rust spots that I can't card off with 0000 steel wool, although I'm primarily using a denim rag. I'm allowing roughly 5-12 hours between carding and re-applying. Some potential issues that I see is my bath isn't working properly. I was getting leakage on one end so I tilted it up slightly on that end and rotated the barrel so each end was getting scalded about the same amount of time. As is now though, the barrel looks unevenly finished. What I'm wondering is if this is normal and I just need to keep on it or if I do have a problem with those brown spots. If I do have a problem, do I need to start over on the barrel? What do people suggest as far as improving my setup? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Rogue River]

I use 4 or 5 applications of LMF to get the brown I want carding between applications. When I get a nice deep dark brown then I use the scalding hot water. The hot water is the final step!

 

[Little Wattsy]

I think you will find that it will blend nicely...remember you are looking a less then "Perfect" commercial blue job, but a nice antique look. NOTE: You can ALWAYS start completely over if you wish.
To finish remember to kill the rust, Heat the barrel with a tourch (you will see the water evaporate out and gone ~ Otherwise it will start rerusting latter as water can be traped under the finish), then rub in the motor oil good. Let sit.
polish and done.
Looking foreword to seeing your pictures!

 

[grey8833]

Hi:

I use Lee Express Blue. Goes on a warmed barrel, like Plum Brown, no waiting several hours for the brown to show up. Have to degrease the barrel and take it down fairly smooth - I did 300 grit. After application you put it straight into the scalding pipe (PCV affair) and add boiling water (I used just regular tap water). Card off with a degreased (put in the washing machine) steel wool pad > and repeat, say 4 to 6 times. Oil.

The end result is a beautiful blue - black, dead even and one of the toughest finishs I have ever seen.

Easy to to odd parts too. Heat, coat and into the pasta pot (don't tell the wife).

Mike F

 

[Rolfkt]

I did a pile of tests on different home brewed rusting solutions before i rust blued my barrel. The test were done on pieces of hot rolled mild steel polished to 320 and 400 grit.

Regarding to polishing :
There was no difference regarding to rusting action and color on 320 and 400 grit. But 400 grit gave a smoother surface.

Rusting solution:
The two best solutions were Niedner blue and ferric chloride. Applied directly on steel these solutions gave far to aggressive pitting and uneven rusting , but work great when diluted with 96% alcohol. Both gave nice dark finishes. The nieder blue gave a smoother surface than ferric chloride. Ferric chloride did not effect silver. Niedner blue turned silver an ugly brown color. Its the nitric acid/iron part that does this.

Niedner blue base solution.
20ml cons. nitric acid + 17ml cons.HCl + 8grams iron + 260ml dist.water.
To make rusting solution, dilute base with 50/50 alcohol.

Ferric Cloride rusting solution.
Add iron to cons.Hcl until it stops reacting. Filter through a coffee filter. This gave a clear yellow solution. Take 25 ml of this and add 125ml alcohol and 100ml dest.water.

Rusting, humidity,temp,time
Rusting was done in a large plastic bucket with a tight lid. Large sponge functioned as water reservoir. The bucket was kept in the washroom. The tests gave best results at 28Celsius and 90 minutes rusting. No visible rust at 18Celsius and 24 hours rusting.

Carding and boiling.
Carding was done with gorbet steel carding brush. It made no difference if I carded first ,then boiled or if I boiled first and carded afterwords. Tap water and distilled water gave the same results(we have soft water). What mattered was boiling time. The pieces had to be boiled 1 hour to convert all the rust to black rust. I took a test piece, did one round of rusting,carding and 30 minutes boiling. Then I sanded off the color with 400 grit and boiled for 10 minutes and it blackend again. By repeating this, I found that one hour boiling is required to turn all the rust black.

Rusting and steel types
Ferric chloride gave poor results on caseharden screws. Neidner work better but needed eighth applications. The GM pistol barrel was alot easier to rust blue than the test pieces of mild steel. This is the barrel after two rounds of rusting with the ferric chloride rusting solution. The test piece next to it was rusted 8 times.

Best regards
Rolfkt

 

[Extranero]

Alright,I need a hand on my first rust bluing experience. I have a .54 GPR kit, my first kit and so far its been coming along great. I'm using LMF Browning and De-greaser. I started off by drawfiling and then sanding down to 220 grit. I crafted together a sweat box that seems to be working, I just boil water and put that in to increase the humidity. I'm in Wyoming so I need it. I made a PVC trough for scalding and I'm using distilled water. I'm basically following the extended LMF directions that I found at the top of the builders bench.

I've gone through about 4 rounds of applying the browning, scalding and carding. Everything except the barrel is done now but the barrel is the problem. I'm getting small brown/rust spots that I can't card off with 0000 steel wool, although I'm primarily using a denim rag. I'm allowing roughly 5-12 hours between carding and re-applying. Some potential issues that I see is my bath isn't working properly. I was getting leakage on one end so I tilted it up slightly on that end and rotated the barrel so each end was getting scalded about the same amount of time. As is now though, the barrel looks unevenly finished. What I'm wondering is if this is normal and I just need to keep on it or if I do have a problem with those brown spots. If I do have a problem, do I need to start over on the barrel? What do people suggest as far as improving my setup? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

The rust spots you are getting are likely due to too much humidity in your sweat box creating condensation. You want it humid but not so humid that it condenses on the barrel. The condensation intensifies the rust on those spots and gives you an uneven brown.

Sean

 

[fleener]

You will have the blotches, but in a few more coats you should see it start to even out. I usually apply 10 - 14 coats. Just depends on when the finish evens out. I sand to 400 grit, and actually boil the parts. Use a rain gutter with caps on each end, with 3 burner camp stove to heat the water.

It will come together. It is hard to mess this up.

I kill the acid with a baking soad paste and hand rub it in. Heat up the barrel and rub it down with bees wax to seal it.

Try using steel wool that is de greased.

snapper

 

[amurican]

Yup, I just stayed on it and it evened out with a few additional coats. I did reduce the humidity in my sweat box which was definitely a good idea. I started getting alarmed right after I boosted up the amount of water I put in the box. That really rusted it up quick and allowed me to apply rounds of the browning agent faster but if I would have kept on that schedule I think I would have had trouble. It came out great though, I'm really happy with it. Thanks a lot for all the helpful advice.