doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Sunlight and case colors

Don't worry. You will get over it...

So, a 69K gun and somebody has their big sweaty mitt all over the case colors. O-o-o-o-kay! LOL Just kidding, of course.

Does the sun bleach snow? Or water???... how about water? Is water deep in a cave lighter in color than water under a tropical sun?

Oh, of course... snow and water have no pigment. So let's consider some things that do have pigment, like rocks. I notice that most rocks don't get bleached by the sun, or are typically darker on the inside if you break them. After millions of years of exposure to sunlight, shouldn't all rocks on the surface be bleached white by now? Same goes for sand, which will be the same color a foot deep as sand on the surface exposed to the sun.

How about grass? Does grass turn a lighter green or get bleached out when exposed to the sun, or when it is deprived of sunlight?

And does the sun bleach skin, or does it make skin turn brown? Shouldn't Nordic people be much darker than indigenous Equitorial African people? Ever seen a black person with a tan line after exposure to the sun? I have.


Even on the moon, there are both light and dark colored rocks and dust, whether on the always illuminated near side, or on the perpetually shaded dark side. Clearly, there is more involved in color retention than simply exposure to sunlight.

But to kinda get back on topic, it seems the jury is still out on sunlight damaging case colors, and nobody has done any definitive testing to prove what is often stated as fact. It appears that there are a lot of other things that cause them to wear, fade, or become obscured. I'm still blown away by some of the results we've seen here that restore a lot of case colors by simply cleaning in an ultrasonic tank. That process probably deserves more study too. A couple days ago, I watched a YouTube video where a guy tested 8 different ultrasonic cleaning solutions by individually cleaning the filthy carbon crusted pistons and rods from an old V-8 engine. There was a wide range of results from the same ultrasonic tank, ran for identical times. Surprisingly, one of the very best performers was Cascade dishwasher pods, and the cost per gallon of solution was much cheaper than several of the more highly touted specialty brands. So the same could hold true for ultrasonic cleaning of case colored gun parts too.

I don't know if Doc Gaddy would say that case colors are are minerals. Most of us would conclude that abrasives can remove gun finishes, but why are the "low" spots fading.

I'm not sure what to call those colors other than mineral. It may not be the best name, but it is all I can think of. In the end, there are chemical compounds that are responsible for the colors. I don't think they are anything organic, though they may have had some organic origins at one time. Google tells me that the Oxford dictionary defines mineral as,

noun
1.
a solid inorganic substance of natural occurrence.
"it identifies the mineral or compound present"
2.
BRITISH
(in commercial use) effervescent soft drinks.
adjective
of or denoting a mineral.
"mineral ingredients such as zinc oxide"

So "mineral" seems appropriate to me. What else could we call them?


The low spots fade from anything acid. You know, of course, what would happen if you wiped down your guns with vinegar. If there is acid in your sweat or the oils in your hands, or possibly some gun care products are slightly acidic, they could be slowly fading your colors as well as abrasion. Things that are just very mildly acidic would take longer to do this of course, but it would still happen.

This is the same dispute that people had on here several years ago. As I previously said, think of case coloring as a rusty nail outside 24 hours a day. Would the sun, remove the rust from the nail? No. That was the way Oscar Gaddy explained it to us. I have to believe him. He was an expert. Good luck.

My point of view in the discussion is that the colors are oxides, and not likely zinc oxides. Iron oxides are not likely to be chemical compounds, but rather chemical reactions. The "discussion" seems to be, can sunlight provide the energy to drive the chemical reaction, to create new oxides on case colored gun surfaces, which results in a different visual appearance.

Earlier, there did not seem to be dispute that hidden, internal gun surfaces, may very well be protected by various traditional and modern oils, probably for corrosion and wear resistance. But, that is a general area of many guns, where case colors do not seem to be affected, or as affected by the appearance of fading.

craig, I think we are haggling over semantics then. Iron oxides would be minerals in anyone else's book and most definitely they are chemical compounds. How can they NOT be chemical compounds? Everything that physically exists is a chemical compound. They are not reactions. They are created by reactions.

But be that as it may, I don't think sunlight fades them. I see no evidence that it does and anyone that does the case colors in the windows test seems to find the same result - no fade.

Do you think sunlight will fade a rust blued barrel? That is another iron oxide.

Thanks Brent, I agree there is a disconnect, my mistake. I was thinking back to Gaddy's paper, and what I perceived, reference to things like petrified wood, as confusing.