doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DIY Gunsmithing @ doublegunshop.com bluing/browining Damascus/Fluid steel barrels

I have seen some sleeved guns that were originally Damascus guns but were sleeved with modern steel barrels and then rust blued over the new barrels and given a brown damascus finish on the original Damascus block.

This McCririck is one that held my fancy but overwhelmed my wallet. I liked this gun for reasons other than the barrel bluing/browning, and I keep some pictures so I could watch for it again, and as a reference of interest for me.



Anyway, I discovered I own a gun with such barrels. However, after sleeving, they were polished and rust blued over their entire lengths, so the Damascus did not become obvious until after they had become a bit worn by years of use in the field.

I am going to reblue them as they were when I got them, but I was wondering how was the mixed media finish on that McCririck actually accomplished. Does anyone know or have a good guess?

Brent,
The finish on the steel sleeves seems brown rather than black. I am given to understand the brown is accomplished by not boiling them, rather just card and reapply the next coat of "acid".
Try it first on an old barrel.
Mike

You can rust blue the tubes first.
Then carefully polish (repolish) the damascus breech section, the monobloc and rust brown that portion of the bbls.
Rust Brown requires no boiling water,,just repeated rustings and when doing a Damascus finish the rust brown finish must be 'etched' betw cycles.

Some finishers only etch every other rusting cycle, but no matter. The already Rust Blued portion of the bbls must be protected from the etching soln or it will remove the rust bluing as well/

One easy way to do that is to coat the blued section(s) with common shellac. A heavy coat and do the bores as well to protect them from etching.
Paint it on carefully at the edges of the sleeve joint. You will have a perfect line of brown & blue.
Keep a sharp eye on that edging after carding as it may need touch up if the carding starts to erode the sharp edge of the line betw brown and bluing.

Since the Rust Brown portions never go into boiling water (that'd turn them to Rust Blue),,the shellac will perfectly protect the blued surfaces and the bores from the etching soln.
Don't forget to protect the bores!
It does the job when rustbluing and then etching for a Black& White damascus pattern,,though I often recoated the bores after every 7 cycles of boiling and etching just to be safe.

Mike,
I think you are probably right. Looking closely at some other photos, it seems they are at least plum. For some reason, I thought it had a nearly perfect blue/black, but I see that is not the case.

Kutter, thanks so much for this description. As always, your posts make perfect sense. I have never done Damascus and have not etched barrels like that - I know very little about it, though I followed Oscar Gaddy's posts closely when he talked about the process. Once upon a time, I had some articles he had written about it.

I am tempted to give that a try, but right now, I am in the middle of moving north to a more hospitable climate and time is short. My new shop will take some work to get ready, so I am racing to get this done in the old shop while I tear down everything inside it and haul it piecemeal up the road 300+ miles.

I would not have expected damascus on a light gun that was proofed for 1.25 oz.

Brent,
In my considered, but admittedly prejudiced, opinion you would have to move considerably south to find a more hospitable climate.
Mike

I guess that's all a matter of perspective. No way i'm moving one inch further south. Summers have become so oppressive and in winters, the cattails never freeze anymore. Hardwater fishing is less that 2 wks, and sketchy at best. Soon one will not be able to get house insurance here simply because of the storms. It is time to leave.

No, the correct direction for us is north, as far as we can go.

I do not believe these McCririck & Sons barrels were originally finished with blacked (rust blued) tubes and a browned Damascus breech section.

Rather, it appears we are seeing two different shades of plum brown, likely due to differences in the composition or alloys of the tubes and the Damascus breech section.

Actually, if you have good color perception and look closely, there are two more additional shades of plum color on the two sections of the rib. So that is four slightly different colors on one barrel set, caused by four different alloys, along with changes due to aging and oxidation over time.

It might be possible to do a two-tone browning/blacking job by first blacking, and then browning and etching only the Damascus breech section after masking the blacked (rust blued) part. But that would take some real skill and talent to pull off.


I don't think Minnesota is nearly far enough north. The Nutty Professor really ought to consider homesteading in Arctic Northern Canada, or maybe the future 51st State of Greenland.

Meanwhile, because the world is not melting and the climate hasn't actually changed to any meaningful or existential extent, I will need to once again put a tarp over a large Japanese Weeping Cherry Tree that is now in full bloom. Why? Because in about 9 out of 10 years, we get sub-freezing temperatures soon after it blooms. Last year, the so-called "hottest year on record", the flowering tree got covered with over an inch of snow right after I covered it. This Monday night, the low is predicted to be 25°F and then 23°F on Tuesday night.

Hey, looky here! The hottest day on record for Iowa was 91 years ago... Older Democrats may need to use their bifocals to see the numbers. And they will also need to remove their blindfolds. But that will never happen.

The whole temperature thing is interesting isn't it ?,i distinctly remember being taught in school about the planet going through little ups and downs in climate ,hot years cold years decades and so on,friends who attended with me remember the same...my kids in thier twenty's, on asking them about it -it was never taught in school ,they were only taught the doom and gloom of climate change ...our winters are definitely milder ,and our summers definitely longer ,but still miserable Newfoundland weather !
But so far I haven't burnt up outside, the potatoes still grow well,we dont see as much spring ice in the bay ,and the warmer weather don't help the ptarmigan thats for sure but easy to understand.