Refinishing a Rifle Barrel (Mosin Nagant 91/30)

[j.hayes.sd]

I hate to "beat a dead horse" but I am very new to "gunsmithing" or anything to do with guns at all other than shooting them. I have a mosin nagant 91/30 that I am trying to "refinish" the barrel and reciever on, and am completely lost.

I have heard of several ways of refinishing but cannot seem to find the "right one" I have heard of parkerizing, bluing (hot and cold), duracoating, painting, and even powder coating...

What I need to know is which of these will provide a durable, descent finish with minimal upkeep and minimal resources to complete.

I am limited to the equipment needed to complete this project, as I live in an apartment.

P.S. To those who adventure to offer advice on this topic, please if at all possible break down the procedure so that a "rifle refinisher for dummies" can understand. Thank you so much for your time and knowledge

 

[Unclenick]

Of all the methods you mentioned, only cold bluing is really suitable for an apartment. The painting methods involve bead or abrassive blasting for best adhesion. Some recommend zinc Parkerizing first to give the paint some way to get a good toehold. You also need a way to bake the whole gun in a controlled temperature in a hot box or oven.

Hot bluing involves working with molten alkalii salts that are extremely hazardous and that are not at all prudent to mess with if you aren't on a concrete floor in a well ventilates space, IMHO. It also involves multiple hot tanks for degreasing and other operations in addition to the bluing itself. It's easy to spend many hundreds of dollars for a basic hot bluing setup even if you are equipped to weld up your own tanks.

Parkerizing involves heating dilute phosphoric acid in a stainless tank large enough to submerge the gun in and you need to control the temperature of the water in it. Again, abrasive or at least glass bead blasting is needed immediately prior to submersion for good results.

So, it's not cost effective to set up for any of those finishes for doing one gun. Rust bluing is a maybe, but you still need one tank you can boil water in that you can submerge the whole gun in. Personally, I don't like to submerge a gun in anything water-based that doesn't include rust inhibitors without first removing the barrel. That is so I don't trap water in the action threads. Submersion in water displacing oil afterward is a satisfactory alternative, for the most part, but then you need a second tank. It might be possible to rust blue with only the boiling tank, to then spray everything down with water displacing oil, then stand the gun up in a jar of that oil, action down, and with only enough oil to cover the action threads. That would avoid a second tank and as large a quantity of the oil. WD-40 (available by the gallon at auto parts stores) will actually do this job, but you want to wipe it all off with regular gun oil afterward, as is gets tacky when it dries out.

Cold blue is your easiest option. Unfortunately it is the hardest to get uniform results from and is the least rugged. Search on the subject in this forum and lots of threads will come up with ideas about how best to approach it. Take a look at the new cold blue offered by Shooters Solutions.