I was running low on Mark Lee Express Blue this morning and was just wondering what would happen if I used the Mark Lee Express Browning solution (excellent for Browning, BTW) as a bluing solution. Just curious. Thanks, Gil

They are both listed together on one MSDS sheet.
The haz chems are potasium chlorate <10% ,,the same stuff that fired corrosive primers makes steel rust I believe
and iron trichloride <5%

Might be a slight difference in the concentration in each product,,just a guess of course. But if it rusts the metal,,boiling will turn that brown rust to blue/black.

I use Laurel Mtn Rust Brown Soln for all my slow rust bluing..same result,, boil it and it turns blue/black.
I do use Mark Lee's Express Rust Blue soln as well.

Was a time when I used BirchWood Casey Muzzle Loader Quick Bbl Brown for Express Rust Bluing.
Same result with boiling,,turns it blueblack.
That worked good as it had mercury bi-choride in it. They took it off the market of course when the world went Green and just as well.
The newer stuff is Merc free, probably has like what Mark Lee's stuff has in it but I never tried it since using Lee's soln.

AFTER BOILING, I DO NOT THINK THERE WILL BE MUCH DIFFERENCE. TRY IT ON A SMALL PORTION FIRST.

I don’t know about the ingredients in each solution…but there is a huge difference in how the solutions look when compared side by side. The express blue solution is much lighter in color than the express brown fwiw.
I don’t really care for the color the express brown gives. Way too copper toned for my taste.

[quote=Kutter]They are both listed together on one MSDS sheet.
The haz chems are potasium chlorate <10% ,,the same stuff that fired corrosive primers makes steel rust I believe
and iron trichloride <5%

Wow. Potassium Chlorate is some "bad stuff" and it should be handled with extreme caution. It reacts vigorously, and in some cases spontaneously ignites or explodes. I would be pleased that someone else was mixing that into a solution I was going to use instead of me doing it.

Potassium Chlorate is mixed in a soln,,you buy it as Mark Lee's Express Brown or Blue Soln.
It's been on the market for about 40 years and no one has ever had a bottle of it explode that I've heard of.

You can make your own potassium chlorate from common bleach and potassium chloride salt substitute.
Yes it's a strong oxidizer and needs to be separate from certain other chemicals. But so do alot of other common chemicals and compounds.

Iron Trichloride is more commonly known as Ferric Chloride.
Damascus etch is the common gun finishing use and it's also found in many rust bluing formulas.

This is Rust Brown Soln,,,,,Boiled and carded

Kutter;

Please do not misinterpret what I wrote about the concerns about Potassium Chlorate. I was writing about its concerning nature as a stand alone chemical, NOT in a mixture of bluing solution--of which I would not have concerns---hence I wrote that I would be pleased that some other person was mixing it into a solution and not me.

Nice engraving on the butt plate of your photos. Who did the engraving?

Stephen Howell

Sorry, that was my mistake...

Engraving is mine on a Meriden Model 1915 pump .22 Deluxe that I restored and upgraded.
Was badly power buffed and hot blued. Left to rust a bit.
Wood was left alone,,so I just cleaned it up with linseed on a cloth and left it alone. Nice orig wood finish and checkering.
Bore is excl,,shoots very nice,,StdVel only of course..

I polished the metal to regain flats and straight lines and added my own scroll pattern engraving.
Meriden did engrave some of these deluxe M1915's,,but my layout pattern isn't anything close to what the factory offered and it's signed and marked
So there's no attempt to move it as an orig Deluxe 'Engraved'.

The name could be removed of course and then the rifle passed off as anything someone wants to tell you it is.
I have had that occur.


Here are some pics of the Meriden
I don't know why they come out so large....

Kutter;

Your work is lovely, and beautifully executed. In short, a joy to behold. Everything about it is masterfully: the scrolls, shading, stipling, the form of the flowers and their placements. You have your own style and it shows through in this work as it did in the buttplate of the previous work. Few people can execute a nick and dot border in an understated but elegant way that you did on that butt plate.

Stephen Howell

I concur with Mr. Howell. Beautiful work Kutter.

Wow Kutter, I knew that you did some engraving in addition to having a lot of other gunsmithing skills and knowledge... but I had no idea that your engraving was that good. The work on that Meriden 1915 pump .22 is gorgeous, and even more impressive considering the photos are much larger than normal size. I sure hope we'll get to see more of your engraving in the future, even if it makes me envious to know I couldn't even draw that well with pencil and paper, much less cut it into steel.

I did understand bushveld's comment concerning mixing a compound containing potassium chlorate. But it made me smile to think about some of the things me and my classmates did in our college organic chemistry lab classes. I made my first rust bluing solution in that lab using a formula John Bivens shared in a Rifle Magazine article. We had a very well stocked and well equipped lab, and when you turn some young guys loose in such an environment with minimal supervision, well, it's a miracle we didn't get seriously hurt or killed. We made ammonium triiodide, which is a very unstable contact explosive. It was fun to put some on a doorknob and watch as someone set it off with a flash when they touched it. But one classmate had a bottle of it on the kitchen table in his apartment, and it detonated when someone slammed the door. Just a bit too unstable. It's very cool to see potassium permanganate crystals and glycerin spontaneously combust into purple flames when you add a few drops of water. When we learned about nitrating things, it seemed like a great idea to make guncotton, or nitrocellulose. We had fun with that, and were soon attempting to nitrate about any organic substance we could, including some dead guppies from the aquarium in the biology lab. Ever see a dead guppy erupt in a flash of smoke? I made one batch of guncotton, and decided to dry it in the sun on a large rock in the landscaping outside the lab on a very warm and sunny spring day. When I went back to retrieve it a couple hours later, it had apparently ignited in the sun, because all that was left was some flash residue on the rock. We got the brilliant idea to make nitroglycerine, and were setting up the equipment to do the nitrating process, but fortunately came to our senses and decided to abandon that experiment. Of course, there was lots of other stuff, such as putting sodium into a glass jar, tossing it into a pond, and shooting the jar with a .22 to watch the extremely violent reaction of sodium in water.

Girls don't do stuff like this, which helps explain why they have a longer life expectancy. Fortunately, boys these days are probably too busy playing with their cell phones to do a lot of these things. And many of the Liberals can't even decide what sex they are.

I should mention that some of these insane ideas were hatched during what we called "Cocktail Hour". The professor was gone every day between 12:00 and 1:00 for lunch, and we had free access to cases of anhydrous ethyl alcohol that was stored in the chemical supply room. That is 200 proof pure grain alcohol, which we used to purify substances after doing recrystallizations. It was dehydrated with magnesium chloride desiccant to remove all traces of water that aren't removed by distillation. Of course we had to mix it with ginger ale, 7-Up, or orange juice from the Student Union.

Kutter, saying that you are talented is like saying the sun is bright. It's just a gross understatement.

Once again, thank you for sharing your wisdom and skills with us mere mortals.

I feel that I would like to set things straight about Potassium Chlorate and other Oxygen givers such as Sodium Chlorate that seem to have been much maligned by the Joy Police health and safety brigade. This was one of the main constituents of strike anywhere matches (the ones with the bright red tops) now sadly on this side of the pond they are now extremely hard to obtain now things have gone to the safety match only. Sodium Chlorate on its own can not spontaneously burst in to flames or explode it must have a flammable substance added to it, in the browning solutions it is there to add more Oxygen to enable the acidic Ferric Chloride to work a little faster. A more modern mixture is to use a mixture of 1:1:1 Hydrogen peroxide (another joy police victim now available in low concentrations) to add the oxygen water and Ferric Chloride. For some specialized Black Powder mixes it is used as a substitute for Potassium Nitrate. To explain the myth about corrosive primers it was not the Potassium Chlorate or the Sulphur that did the real damage it was the Mercury Fulminate in the mixture. The days are now gone that with the use of household chemicals the fascination of home chemistry has ended for the younger generations of today, I had a fabulous time making all those things that the Chemistry teacher said you should rather not especially that fun stuff NI3 for instance.

Damascus;

Thank you for pointing out my error I did not include that Potassium Chlorate must have something combustible contact it in order for it to ignite. Your correction will keep others from errors.

However, I want to say that I am pleased that I commented, even in error, because it resulted in further posts that not only indicated that Kutter is a gentleman but also a artist---evident from the most excellent engraving work that Kutter has done and provided a spotlight upon his knowledge and skills that I was not aware. It also caused me to read some of Kutter's past post's and learn of his exceptional gunmaking expertise and knowledge.

Kindest Regards;
Stephen Howell