Painting a Mauser bolt.

DON'T.
If you paint the bolt body the bolt will not operate well, and will be "sticky"
The paint will immediately scrap off and look terrible.

If you want to paint the bolt handle, that's fine, but due to the handling it gets during operation, the paint won't stick to it very well either.

Most Mauser bolts were left "in the white" with blued handles and shrouds.
 
Send it off to a shop and have it blued. If its a German K98, it supposed to be blued anyway, might as well do it right if it bothers you that its been polished.

GregM
 
I assume the more treatments one does the darker it gets?
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Cold blue is about the crappiest finish you can put on a gun. It is not durable (WD-40 will work right through it), it never goes on evenly, so you end up with a blotchy finish, and it smells bad. It also rubs off with your fingers, leaving a sickly brownish-grey color to the metal.

On the other hand, if your rifle is one of a myriad of other Mauser rifle variants other than a German 98k, it more than likely is supposed to have a polished bolt.
 
Cold blue is about the crappiest finish you can put on a gun. It is not durable (WD-40 will work right through it), it never goes on evenly, so you end up with a blotchy finish, and it smells bad. It also rubs off with your fingers, leaving a sickly brownish-grey color to the metal.
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A properly done Cold Blue makes for a beautiful, dark finish. Improperly done Cold Bluing leads to the results you have described. Whatever it is you are seeing... The methods used to create that finish were not right.

Cold Blue never last as long as a good Hot Blue; that is true. Cold Blue should never be even close to as bad as you describe, though.

And WD-40? Seriously? That's a very poor argument, since WD-40 is a very poor gun cleaning solvent, a terrible gun lubricant, and horrible for most stocks.
 
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