bluing steel with a torch bluing steel with a torch

It would be a good idea to get some gloves on. You can get a IR non-contact thermometer for less than $20 at Harbor Freight. Excessive buffing on stainless steel could result in a grainy appearance so do it with care. }. SO, DG; unless I missed it, I am assuming the torch is used separate from heating the tank/ container with the boiling solution. You might need two applications to clean up more deeply rusted spots. journeyman. Submerge in water and scrape edge. My dad keeps his in a big safe with large desiccant packs that he threw in there. Further, I probably would have used a coarser wet-dry to prep the raw steel (this was a kit Kentucky long rifle) rather than the 1500 grit I used. I thought there was something that could help improve the colors but wasnt sure until I came across this. Seriously, this is interesting and thank you for posting it, but I hope to never be in a position where I need to use either of these techniques! Posted December 21, 2009. They have their place, but doing a whole gun with them isnt that place. Answer Also Dont get the 275-300F bath on you. Hardening will cause it to be more brittle, which could cause the hammer to chip and cause injury. I have always wondered about storage in gun soft cases or the foamed Hard cases, and humid or dry, heat and cold. Its a good process for processing lots of guns, but I simply cannot recommend it for people who just want to do a gun here or a gun there.. In the nitre bluing process, polished and cleaned steel parts are immersed in a bath of molten saltstypically potassium nitrate and sodium nitrate (sometimes with 9.4 grams (0.33oz) of manganese dioxide per pound of total nitrate). However, due to the unique qualities of stainless steel, you cant simply blue the material however way you like. Question Then you can express blue it with a propane torch and a tank of boiling water. Hopefully these concepts suggest caution and diligence for what you are doing. I just had my first experience rust browning a barrel. Bluing may be applied by immersing steel parts in a solution of potassium nitrate, sodium hydroxide, and water heated to the boiling point, 275310F (135154C) depending on the recipe. I guess Ill have to just be happy drying toilet paper. Spray down the whole barreled action with copious amounts of WD-40, inside and out. They should send you a stipend for your time. Keep posting like this. on Introduction. Bluing is most commonly used by gun manufacturers, gunsmiths, and gun owners to improve the cosmetic appearance of and provide a measure of corrosion resistance to their firearms. 84 or Du-Lite 3-0. When you add water to a hot salt tank, you get an explosion of steam, and you need to develop some skill in adding the water with a very fine copper pipe on your water hose to prevent steam blow-outs spattering salts all over you. We have all kinds of rifles and shotguns with recievers made from non-Fe alloys again we do not give it a second though or break out the hardness tester. The wire is extremely small in diameter, so you have to take that into consideration. I use a pickling paste. Heat the area you'd like to drill just until it starts to glow red, then allow it to cool slowly. Shooting Mystery is an independent website that provides content for informational purposes only. If you havent done it before, wait until I mention some items about it. 2. For the process your metal should be nicely polished for the best results.The more shinier the polish the more your end result will glow. I can' Its a good process, but it isnt a 1:1 replacement for blueing. Theres a reason why I buy up clapped-out guns and stuff where people look at me with a WTF?! I didnt drop outta my mommas womb being able to do this stuff. Heating white, degreased steel to 550 to 600F results in brilliant colors. Cold blueing is OK for touchups, at best. Next comes the main part. After spending most of his career as a firearms expert and enthusiast, he retreated to the great outdoors to raise his family in peace and quiet. His enthusiasm for handling firearms and hunting gear inspired him to create the Shooting Mystery blog. Ive used this method in a pinch to make a tap from a cheap mild steel bolt to chase out galled female threads. Also thanks DG! However, the chemicals from the bluing process can accomplish uneven staining on aluminium and polymer parts. Your 700F temp is too high, IMO. Its durable and wears well. It provides the stainless steel surface with a layer of protection, giving rust and corrosion resistance while reducing potential glare as well. 2023 All Rights Reserved by Shooting Mystery. Oil binds with the metal and prevent it from getting air/chemicals to corrode. Its nice when something can be re-used a time or two, especially when used in diversified ways. For modern uses of black oxide, see, Learn how and when to remove these template messages, Learn how and when to remove this template message, "How To Remove Rust From A Gun Without Damaging Bluing? It is named after the blue-black appearance of the resulting protective finish. Hot blueing is a good process, especially if you have a lot of iron to shove through the blueing process quickly. In colloquial use, thin coatings of black oxide are often termed 'gun bluing', while heavier coatings are termed 'black oxide'. The process was to coat the gun parts in an acid solution, let the parts rust uniformly, then immerse the parts in boiling water to convert the red oxide Fe2O3 to black oxide Fe3O4, which forms a more protective, stable coating than the red oxide; the boiling water also removes any remaining residue from the applied acid solution (often nitric acid and hydrochloric acid diluted in water). Its oiled in production to keep it from rusting on store shelves. Heat the Steel. I like parkerization on some of my milsurps. the cost of the burners or heaters to heat up all these tanks really only practical if you have natural gas available } Gee, Im thinkin Duro or cero coat maybe even Krylon might be a good enough.. The salts will be a gooey caustic mess while theyre cold, and you MUST have covers on the tank when youre not using them, or the salts will climb over the edges of the tank and make a mess on the floor. For hazzalandy: carbon content has nothing to do with the color process, it is only the temperature you heat to, and to a lesser extent, the time spent hot. I tried heating the barrel in sections (as Brownells says is ok) but did not get a very good result, being unable to get a uniform heat in any =thing approaching more than a few inches at a time. Always wear goggles and gloves when operating a propane blow torch. But since this was my first project, with an inexpensive kit as a learning tool, and as I intend to do this again with a much more expensive kit, my trials and errors and your voice of experience will be very useful the next time around. You should keep guns in a safe, if you can. I rarely use them. The reason why blued guns rust is that something was allowed to attack the surface blueing and get through it to new steel or the blueing job wasnt deep enough to complete passivate the surface from red rust. You can experiment ultimately what oils to use. Youre a gunsmith who has a lot of nice guns! Youll have a hot caustic degreaser tank (about 10 minutes), then a cold rinse tank, then into the hot salts for, oh, 15 to 20 minutes, then out into the hot rinse, then into a cold running rinse tank, then into a water displacing oil tank for 20 minutes or so. While I am certain that I could do it myself, you already have all the bits and parts and stuff so it is worth my dollars to buy a gunsmiths time to have this done for me. I like 1.5 wide shop cloth myself). If youre interested, just ask and I can provide more details. Remove any previous finish. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. If you cant, just get them out of the case and allow air to circulate around them. Ive cut and pasted this to my notes on the cloud. Hot NaOH is so alkaline it is great as dissolving organic materials. It is slow rust blueing. It is caused by a layer of oxide that forms when the steel is heated. - Ballachy", "Bluing of Steel by Heat Treatment: Why and How it Happens? It also looks good on AK type weapons of which I have three to park. When polishing something like the above rifle/shotgun, youve got a pretty light coat of rust, without severe pitting. The object on the left is a custom mild steel potentiometer knob! By using this service, some information may be shared with YouTube. The use of stainless steel alloy varies a lot from one manufacturer to the other and thats why the bluing effect wont always be consistent. Whats the difference between Brown Express and Blue Express? The head is fixtured and and an arm holding the valve seat moves the the proper location. New guns are typically available in blued finish options offered as the least-expensive finish, and this finish is also the least effective at providing rust resistance, relative to other finishes such as Parkerizing or hard chrome plating or nitriding processes like Tenifer. Did you ever find out what oil they were using? Keep them in that state while you heat them but be sure to not boil up the tank. "dateModified": "2022-03-27", In place of using a hot bath (although at a lower temperature) chemically induced method, it is possible through controlling the temperature to heat steel precisely such as to cause the formation of black oxide selectively over the red oxide. For this reason, it is considered not to add any appreciable thickness to precisely-machined gun parts. Cold blues will "keywords": ["how to blue stainless steel"], Not blessed with a climate controlled safe. Remove the bolt & trigger group this might require a pin punch on some guns to pull the trigger group.From what little I can see in the picture here . Just remove the blue/rust, degrease, dry, then blue/card/boil-out/oil/drain. WD-40, as mentioned earlier, is a water-displacing oil compound not a penetrating lube, and for preventing rust, WD-40 actually works pretty well, but it doesnt last like cosmoline or waxy oils used for long-term rust prevention. Shooting Mystery is reader-supported. They should start gassing up approximately 2 to 3 minutes after exposure. I wish I had known more about the process, heating (I was working outside on a 60 degree day) I may have to check with my friend to see if it needs reblued again, Im sure he never shot it. Once you strip the blue & rust, then you can see what youre dealing with. Hi SteelJunkee Method is as follows: Fit rod into drill and set at constant speed Clean rods with acetone on clean rag Use butane and propane mix blow torch to achieve colour range Quench in water Dry The weird thing is that they look great for around 4-5 days then deteriorate. Metal Finishing Guru. Bluing is also used in seasoning cast-iron cookware, to render it relatively rust-proof and non-stick. The difference is immersion in boiling water for bluing. Theres nothing wrong with your method, but is is very hazardous, especially to people who have never done anything like it before. This is a great time to point out that leaving guns in gun cases, especially the woolen/fleece cases, in the back of a closet, is one of the most sure-fire ways to rust the value completely out of a gun. You heat the outside member only when you do a shrink fit.). Degrease and heat the items to be blued in a steel pan to about 700F. One of the reasons I hand-polish up to 600 and buff only above that is that when you see one of my barrels (by holding it up to a light source, and sighting down the barrel from the muzzle at your eye to the breech out at arms length), you see no dips, waves, ripples, etc. You then oil or wax over the finish when youre done. just fyi, the old school method of case hardening steel is to get the piece so hot that a magnet will no longet stick to it and quickly quench it in used motor oil. Safety is the number one priority so protect your body as much as possible. Steps to Hot Blue Steel with a Torch Most knives, rifle receivers and barrels are heated to at least 1200F and cooled and drawn at 490F-700F. By the time I was done it looked like it was a beat up 5 year old gun rather than a 1930s bolt .22 that came from a scrap yard. it would appear these sights are drifted into dovetails. I use it, oh so cautiously in making my biodiesel. Higher carbon contents will take longer to heat. Reply gas coverage is another big one. on Introduction. Ive dealt with strong acids and strong bases in lab work, and I fear the strong bases more. Wait for a day to let the bluing properly cure before you do anything else to it. Modern home hobbyist versions of this process typically use a hydrogen peroxide and salt solution, sometimes with vinegar, for the rusting step to avoid the need for more dangerous acids.[7]. Theres nothing I see as super-dangerous about blueing other than trying to do hot salt blueing without all the correct safety equipment and precautions. Heat the gun parts. Either of these two methods is called 'hot bluing'. It cannot rust any further. This method must not be used on critically heat-treated parts such as receivers, slides or springs. A couple bottles of aged bourbon minimum. Rust bluing was developed between hot and cold bluing processes, and was originally used by gunsmiths in the 19th century to blue firearms prior to the development of hot bluing processes. Never know when it will come in handy. Im asking because theres a guy on YouTube recommending Brown Express first, then several layers of Blue over that. I really appreciate you taking the time to share it DG. "@type": "ImageObject", Hot blueing salts attack soft solders on guns, so it isnt to be done on old shotguns and some older rifles. I can then get the temp to be 600F spot-on in a lead melting pot. This is as deadly as the lye-based hot salts, but more for the temperature of a large batch of salts. 2. Although the steel parts, such as anOrdains watch hands, are near enough miniscule, each This crucible was heated to 730C (1,350F) for up to 6hours (the longer the heat was applied the thicker the case hardening). There's also blued hardware available, like nuts, bolts, screws, and hinges. A few safety items: This item: Special Blue Full Metal Butane Torch (Gold) - Refillable Flame Lighter- Culinary Torch - Welding Torch - Adjustable Dual Flame for Desserts, Creme Brulee, BBQ and Baking. Most waters in the Rockies clear out to the west coast will have high(er) dissolved solids in them. When youre done, attach the thermometer to the tank and fire up the burner. So you said the polishing is key for the coloring process.