Hot salts Bluing

[SCW22]

Hi all.

Has anyone set this up on here with the tanks and burners.

Any advice?

I’m looking into it, I wouldn’t be setting it up at home as I have an industrial unit I could use.

Or is there an easier way to get a good finish.

Just looking into it at the minute as I have a lot of guns of my own to re-blue and practice on.

Cheers. Steve

[Septic]

You don’t need the big, bubbly, caustic tanks, extractor fans etc if you go for slow blueing..
You’ll just have to build yourself a vertical humidity cabinet and stick it in your shed, or garage, and get a 3ft stainless tank for boiling water..

[bighit]

look into the safety aspects of it . Im sure Richard had a nasty accident with hot bluing salts .

[Troubledshooter]

Why not try and contact Colin Molloy as he had an excellent reputation for his re-colouring work before he packed it in, so could probably give you all the advice you need to set up your own tanks.
Richard H would have been another to seek advice from, but nobody seems to be able to contact him. I've tried numerous times by phone and email over the past year without any response at all.

[T 20]

Im sure Richard had a nasty accident with hot bluing salts .

You remember correctly.

Richard showed me the hole in his lower leg where hot salts had splashed onto him, I recall him saying that if the salts hadn't stopped eating his skin away where they had, then he would have had to have an operation to remove the infected area and have skin grafts.


I think I'll stick to rust bluing.

[bighit]

You remember correctly.

Richard showed me the hole in his lower leg where hot salts had splashed onto him, I recall him saying that if the salts hadn't stopped eating his skin away where they had, then he would have had to have an operation to remove the infected area and have skin grafts.


I think I'll stick to rust bluing.

It was your comment I was speaking of. I did a search on hot salt bluing on here and your comment was one that showed up.

Nasty stuff by the sounds of it .

[rovercoupe]

Biggest problem at the moment is the stupid laws surrounding getting the ingredients for the mix.

Other than that with a bit of research it is a simple process but as said you have to be aware of what you are dealing with and the dangers surrounding it. Once I have run out of mix that will be it for me as it’s not worth the hassle getting more chemicals.
I may give parkerising a go on some old guns that just need a finish on them.

[T 20]

Biggest problem at the moment is the stupid laws surrounding getting the ingredients for the mix.

Other than that with a bit of research it is a simple process but as said you have to be aware of what you are dealing with and the dangers surrounding it. Once I have run out of mix that will be it for me as it’s not worth the hassle getting more chemicals.
I may give parkerising a go on some old guns that just need a finish on them.

Perhaps my research was wrong but I thought the chemicals were just Caustic Soda and Sodium Nitrate ?

The Caustic Soda being fairly easy to get hold of, with the Sodium Nitrate being a little bit harder to get hold of unless you know a friendly farmer as it's used as a fertiliser.

I also found a company in Leicester who sell the bluing salts ready mixed.

[Sanyati]

Hot blueing is quite an art but it is horrendously nasty stuff if it is not handled with care. Cold rust blueing is time consuming and I've done a few guns with both methods. If you have a number to do then hot blue is a good option.
I dabbled with parkerizing using both manganese and steel wool methods and the results were great, no super heated caustic salts to catch you out.
Suited the military pieces and very tough, even coated a couple of carbon steel bush knife blades which came out real well and very resilient.
Fascinating processes, all of them.
Hot blueing is a scary one though, be careful.

[BC312]

Try rust blueing, traditional way of blueing guns before hot blueing, it how they blued enfield rifles. I restored a P14 back to its original blue finish from being phosphated in a later war time WW2 finish. The process is to polish then coat with a solution that will rust the gun orange for 24 hours, then boil for 20 minutes when the rust has turned black, dry, card off the lose black shoot finish with fine wire wool and a fine wire carding brush. swab with solution then boil, dry card, five or six times, on the final carding the finish will be a light graphite grey. Then add the magic formula Oil and as like magic, the blue black just suddenly appears, the results if done properly are amazing. Its how they used to do blueing. There are many recipes some dam right lethal some quite safe, for different tints and blues blacks etc.

[johnbaz]

Somewhere in the house I have a three hour DVD that explains all the methods of blueing including the hot salts blueing using something called Oxpho (It's an American made video and I don't know what the stuff is on most of it!!)..

Not seen it in years but i'll see if I can find it out 👍


John

[SCW22]

Thank you for all the replies and advice.

John - that would be great- thank you.

Steve.

[JerryD]

Been looking at this but the chemical nasties are off-putting! I'll stick with getting my restoration jobs chemically blacked by Paul Chell.

I know it's not the same as blueing but it's a really deep black finish and Paul puts a lot in to get the metalwork as good as it can possibly be.




.

[rovercoupe]

Perhaps my research was wrong but I thought the chemicals were just Caustic Soda and Sodium Nitrate ?

The Caustic Soda being fairly easy to get hold of, with the Sodium Nitrate being a little bit harder to get hold of unless you know a friendly farmer as it's used as a fertiliser.

I also found a company in Leicester who sell the bluing salts ready mixed.

Sodium nitrate worked ok but got a recipe of someone on here that used nitrate and nitrite and it worked really well. The other problem is finding a supplier that will sell at a decent price for a few kg at a time.