burch, PM me your e-mail address and I'll pass along Mike Orlen's excellent article on rust blueing. Rust blueing is a major pain IMO, but it's also about $250+ for set of barrels when you 'send out'.

Try a spirit stain instead of the oil stains - old hardwood seems to laugh at oil based stains. Brownells sells a few flavors of spirit stains, I like the ones from R Gale Lock Co.