doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com O K what am I doing wrong....?? Blueing

I’ll use carb cleaner or brake clean for initial cleaning ie.. removing of any machining fluids, old grease oils etc. For final cleaning just prior to rust bluing I’ll scrub well with Greased Lightning .

Don’t think your problem is because of oils, you may want to allow your parts to rust a bit longer, different steels rust differently. I know with Winchester NI steel barrels I need to let them rust overnight. Also keep in mind that the WX has a lot to do with it, higher heat & humidity = quicker rusting. Colder temps generally means less humidity..


Just a thought

Mike Hunter

I always let them rust for 24 hrs. I have about 50% humidity in my workshop. If I need more I hang them in my crawl space in the basement.

I use brake cleaner liberally, particularly in the weep hole in the barrel rib and other spots oil can hide.

I can think of two possibilites besides the residue: 1) You may be running your swab dry or you may be swabing back and forth. Laurel Mtn. is usually very forgiving, but I also know the back and forth swabing will leave the barrels "streaky"...learned the hard way! 2) Leave it on longer with a light and pan of water if you do not have a humidity box or hang it the shower stall with a pan of water and light.

Good luck!

I've used Laurel Mtn Forge for many rust blue jobs on all kinds of firearms and have never had a problem except for one particular Nazi P-38 frame. It simply would not blue well. The edges would not hold the blue and basically became nearly bare while carding the balance of the frame with 4/0 steel wool. Repeated attemps did no good and I finally had to accept the fact. The slide and barrel of the same gun came out beautifully blued with 100% coverage. Have no idea what was different about the frame.

Anyway, I always degrease with brake cleaner and barehand the parts while carding with no problems on any kind of steel from antique low carbon to modern chrome-moly. For me, the detergent in LMF works very well.

OB

One extra step I do is to degrease with acetone, then heat the barrels until all of the condensation dries ( as you warm the barrels with a torch, condensation will form). Then, with clean sand paper, and rubber gloves, I resand the surfaces and re wipe down with acetone. In humid climates, steel will absorb a suprising amount of water. That means it is porus and will also hold trace amounts of oil. Maybe it will help.

I scrub with lye and boiling water and rinse well with boiling water after solvent washing. Another thought... what is the "water displacing oil" you are using? Many water displacing penetrating miracle oils actually loosen and remove rust. And blueing is, of course, a form of rust.

I boil in Dicroclean 909 from Brownell's 24# for no a lot, but $20 Haz Mat fee. One cup per 4gal of rainwater for 15 minutes, rinse with rainwater & you're ready to go. 4 gal mixture will usually do 5-6 sets of barrels. I throw it out after that. I had a set go brown on me and decided whatever life the degreaser had left in it wasn't worth the time / trouble of starting over.

I used acetone for a while, but found streaking from the residue left behind.

90% sure that's your problem.

You need to make sure you have prepped the barrels properly what condition is the metal in? what grades of emery are you using? you also need to be very thorough with degreasing, the two most important stages, prep and degreasing.

Gentlemen;
Thanks for all your help and opinions....I am going to let them sit for a while [sick of them 4 now]....then give it another go in a few weeks...

gunut, oil good before you put them away!