bluing a winchester model 94

[pepemarine]

George: whats the deal with model 94´s. some say that they cannot be blued, some say which ones(serial no.s).

I own one from the first million(558,***) that blued perfectly to a rich and deep blackchrome like and i also own another that has a serial number 2, 888,*** that needs the same treatment, will it blue? i have oxynate 7?


keep blasting!

 

[George Stringer]

Pepemarine, the easiest way to blue these receivers that I've found is to leave them in the tank for about 2 hours taking them out about every 1/2 hour and cooling them in cold water. You won't get the beautiful results as with the pre-64s but they will blue with Oxynate 7. You can also use Oxynate 84 for these and if you're set up for it the results are better. You can e-mail Brownells http://www.brownells.com for complete instructions. After saying all that, your best bet for rebluing a post 64 94 is to return it to the factory. George

 

[Ken Cook]

Pepe,
Your older gun is definitely Pre-64 and will blue pretty well, but even the pre-64 94s don't take the blue very well, and as George suggested, you'll have to leave it in the tank an AWFULLY long time to get good results.
The reason Post-64 Winchesters don't blue well is because Winchester switched their receiver alloy and added a high content of Nickle.
This causes horrible things to happen when you try to blue the gun. I've seen them come out in the ugliest shades of bluish pink and purple you could ever imagine.
The way Winchester gets around this problem is to electroplate the receiver with Iron, thereby creating a ferrous and "blue-able" bed.