A cheap and effective solution to your Bluing needs

O

osallent

New member
I was finishing the refurbishment of a project rifle I bought lately, a formerly beat up $60 Mosin Nagant. I had the stock redone to look as good as it would have looked when it was new, but I had a huge problem. I had some rust on the barrel removed, which exposed part of the barrel with no bluing. After all the trouble I put into restoring the rifle, surely this wouldn't do.:mad:

So I went online and looked at literally hundreds of products, and most of them such as "Blue Wonder" looked to me to be no more than fancy barrel painting that you layer on, and seemed complex to get right. I was not happy. Then my dealer suggested this product called KleenBore Black Magic Bluing. The thing looked like windex, so I was very skeptical, but I decided to give it a try.

After cleaning the worn out spot in the barrel with denatured alcohol, I took a rag, put a little bit of the liquid on it and rubbed it on the barrel. Immediately it got dark, and then a thin red rust and white rust dust started to form on the spot. This thing was having a chemical reaction with the barrel like authentic bluing should. After rinsing with water and wiping away the red/white layer with one pass of the rag, I had a blue finish that matched exactly the bluing on my Mosin Nagant. The bluing is not painted on, it is genuine bluing caused by a chemical reaction...and it is a nice deep bluing. Best of all, it was cheap to buy and simple as dirt to apply. I am 100% happy with my results. Anyone else had any experience with this product?
 
Mr.DontPlay, I don't mind patina, but the rust had to go. Once the rust was removed I had a blued barrel with a bare metal spot. This KleenBore Black Magic stuff was aggressive. It works fast (you can see the chemical reaction happening) and it worked so good that it matched the bare metal stuff with the rest of the barrel. Now the whole barrel is evenly blued. :D

I thought I'd share the tip, hoping to see if anyone else here as also had similar results with it.
 
hmmmm

could you blue the whole barrel or just fix spots because i have a benelli sbe 2 that i need to reblue. how much was this stuff?
 
You could blue a whole gun with it. It was $10 for a 2 ounce bottle, but considering how aggressive this thing works, those two ounces could probably be enough to blue several rifles or shotguns.

I was surprised at how easy it is, all you need is clean metal, a small amount of the solution in a rag, wipe it on the barrel and it immediately starts the chemical reaction. Get some water to rinse it off after 1 minute, then a quick wipe down with another rag and some gun oil....and presto, authentic bluing is done.

The bottle says that it contains "selenious acid," which is corrosive. That's probably the trick to it. True bluing is a controlled corrosion of the barrel that creates a protective layer, instead of eating away the barrel like regular corrosion.

Wikipedia says that selenious acid is primarily used for bluing guns. And apparently you should not drink it or you'll die (common sense)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selenous_acid
 
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Sounds much like Brownells' Oxpho Blue. Looks very watery (although there's now a cream version, which I have not tried), goes on quick, acts fast, and the resulting finish is very durable.

I had an old Winchester carbine I picked up cheap because the barrel had been stripped and was coated in rust. After a lot of careful sanding (PITA ... it's an octagon barrel), I treated it with some wonder-blue-in-a-bottle. It came out looking GREAT! I was stoked.

Until I picked it up a week later and the entire barrel was red with new rust.

So I sanded it down again, repeated the bluing using Oxpho Blue liquid, and two years later it looks as good as it did the day I did the job. It's not quite as dark a blue as the wonder stuff, but it looks quite appropriate for an old lever gun, and it actually protects the metal.
 
If you read the second post, my camera is at my friend's house....though I will try to do some more bluing later in the week and take pictures of it.
 
No cold blue is like paint. They all use the same chemicals. None of them hold up to use, and they promote rust. They are not a substitute for hot bluing. Paint would actually work better. Everyone thinks they have found a cold blue that works as well as hot bluing. They all eventually learn how wrong they were.
 
No cold blue is like paint. They all use the same chemicals. None of them hold up to use, and they promote rust. They are not a substitute for hot bluing. Paint would actually work better. Everyone thinks they have found a cold blue that works as well as hot bluing. They all eventually learn how wrong they were.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't go so far as to be insulting about it, but that is true. Cold bluing is a temporary solution to a minor problem. It will wear faster than a good hot blue, and has other minor side effects.

However, cold bluing is a great way to touch up wear marks, or repair marks on a firearm. And, if you follow the instructions, you can often match the color of the cold bluing to the color of the rest of the firearm. And... so long as you follow the product instructions for cleaning, a good coating of Hoppes #9, your choice of gun oil, or a silicone treatment will go a long way toward preventing rust. (Much better than steel in-the-white will, by itself.)

I'm currently refinishing an old Mossberg 800. The rifle spent nearly 20 years in a behind-the-seat gun rack, as a "truck gun". As such, it has a few spots with no bluing left, and many areas with worn bluing. It's a shame. These rifles had beautiful, deep, dark, rich bluing -- far beyond what the cheap manufacturing processes, and low price demanded. My solution? ...Birchwood Casey Perma Blue. It will allow me to match the existing bluing, protect the metal to some degree, and will last longer than I will own the rifle.

I fully admit, that a good hot blue is far and away better than a cold blue. But, a good cold blue touch up can do wonders for bringing a firearm back to a 'like-new' appearance. (We even did a full cold blue on a rifle in my family, a couple years ago. It's still holding up, without showing wear. ;))
 
I'm not being insulting, I'm stating fact. None of the cold bluing is like paint. They all have a chemical reaction.
Cold blues should be used for touch ups, only.
 
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