doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Traditional Rust Bluing

I would like to read Oscar Gaddy's notes on traditional rust bluing .
Could anyone help in pointing me in the right direction please.

Oscar wrote two articles on damascus refinishing one of which details his black and white process but I do not know of anything specifically on rust blue. I can look up the damascus articles if need be.

Dr. Gaddy's rust blue primer, from Double Gun Journal Vol 8, Issues 2 and 3, 1997 and Vol 14, Issue 1, 2003
https://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=6394&page=2

Oscar was brewing his own rusting solution. I had a supply and used it on several guns with good results. When I ran out of it and Pinkertons I tried Brownells and found that it was much faster here in LA. Our very high humidity makes it work in a couple of hours. I would point out that Oscar was using log wood dye as a treatment after rust blueing. That dye is available as a liquid trap dye so you don't have to buy chips to make your own.
bill

Thanks for the help so far .
Reason for asking is, it seems to be a dieing craft here in the UK with only a few specialist companies doing it and many gunsmiths preferring to do hot bluing with the consequential dire disasters to soldered barrels and ribs. A friend now has one of his guns back at the gunsmith who blacked his barrels a few months ago and the gun now has loose ribs . Gunsmith will not accept liability.
As many of you know , cold blacking is a relatively simple process only requiring , chemicals, time, and more than a little patience.

Hi Salopian, I am in the UK I have had a big increase of barrels coming in over the last three or four years with the ribs up after having been caustic blacked, also lots of guns showing dents on the outside not on the inside as they have been polished out, avoid anything with mercuric chloride in it, nasty stuff.

Salopian, I spent the best part of 5 years trying to replicate "Best Birmingham Black" I eventually succeeded but it took ten variances from Angier's quoted BBB. It involved much trial and error, research and modifications to methodolgy before I could achieve excellent repeatable results. I did a set of inter war yrs Jeffery bbls for the late Mike Bonner which Jack Rowe said were as good as any he'd seen, here or back in the UK.I'm clearing up from closing my shop and my notes are in a tote somewhere in the garage. I will try to find them and will post all the trials and tribulations together with the final recipe
later this weekend.I'll probably start a new Thread "Best Birmingham Black"

I look forward to that, Hugh. Thank you.

Best,
Ted

Hugh;

That praise from Jack Rowe is high praise indeed. I also look forward to your "Best Birmingham Black" and I know that Jack would be pleased to see it as well if he were still with us.

I remember Jack commenting on you being from the same area of Birmingham as he lived in as a youth and that he considered your engineering education and background a great asset to you as you undertook the "arts and mysteries" of gunmaking. Jack had a very high regard for your skill and your work. I certainly miss the telephone calls that sometimes went to an hour or so with Jack in his later years.

Did Jack ever mention to you his great admiration for the late German gunsmith and professor of gunmaking Willi Barthold? It was upon Jack's recommendation that I chased down a copy of Willi Barthold's famed German text gunmaking textbook "JAGD-WAFFEN-KUNDE". This text contains the barrel blacking formula used by Barthold, which is the same as one of the Swiss blacking formulas in Algiers book. Jack told me that he gave this formula to a fellow Brit in California shortly after Jack came to America, and that for a number of years the person in California blacked barrels for Jack, but after a few years his friend in California stopped blacking barrels.

Kindest Regards;
Stephen

Hugh - Are you familiar with Bob Veasey's blueing solutions? Are any simillar to the "Birmingham black" you developed?