Blueing questions???

A

Alex Johnson

New member
Hi guys, I'm looking to get away from my stovetop Belgium Blueing setup. I'm going to build a set of tank stands and propane burners to use outdoors. I know that Brownells sells ready made stands and burners, but I can't see spending the extra money on them, when I will have more time on my hands this summer than cash. Does anyone know of plans for homemade burners. I see lots of information on the web about people building their own gas forges, so I can't imagine it would be too tough to build a set of burners for simply boiling water. I'm only going to get into Dicropan since I will be reblueing shotgun barrels.
 
Next time you go to the junkyard, find yourself an old water heater. You'll find plenty of burner pipes in it. These things never wear out (what moving part?) and all you have to do is arrange them as you would any other plumbing job.
 
Alex,
E-mail me at dnsac2@aol.com. I just built a pipe burner out of parts from my local propane supplier and it works great. I will send you a diagram.
I use the "Belgium Blue" available from brownells and have great luck with it. I have not used the Dicropan, but have read the instructions and it seems a little more involved. With the Belgium Blue all you have to do is throughly clean the barrel, heat the barrel in the boiling water, let it dry, then carefully swab on the solution and wait a few seconds for it to dry, then back into the boiling water. Remove from the water, then I card it with steel wool and back into the water. Repeat until you get the desired color of bluing. We used this stuff at gunsmithing school and almost always had great results with it. If the job came out bad it was because of poor cleaning or too much solution on the first couple of coatings of the barrel. Do not put so much solution on the pad that it runs down the barrel the first couple of times. After that it does not seem to make much of a differance. Be sure to clean all of the oil off the steel wool prior to use. When you are happy with the blue, dunk the barrel in water displacing oil and your done.
Hope that helps-John K.

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I've got a stainless steel pan about six inches deep and as big as my gas grill that I use for oysters. Would this work? Am I just using it to boil water?

Mike Root
 
Mike,
The pan you have will work fine if it is long enough for you to put whatever you are bluing in it. And yes, only water is required for IM Rust bluing. Some people use a second tank for a cleaning solution prior to bluing but you can just clean the part with TCE cleaner available from Brownells (www.brownells.com) without using a tank.
IM Bluing takes a little time but turns out a beautiful job. - John K
 
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