Had a play today with my first attempt at hot bluing and I can report back I have not suffered any chemical burns and have a partial sucess, its not as blue as i would have liked but its a manky old meteor barrel that was painted so sanded it down and gave it a bath!
Hopefully once i have the buffing set up things will improve but its still better than a cold blue and I now have a bit more info to get going. Still a way off putting something i care about in the blue so might have to start on the stock!
Oh also did the button I made up for the superstar and it came out ok. Everything is currently dosed in oil.
Looks good for a first attempt, what chemical is it I've always wanted to try doing it myself so will be following all your progress
Thanks, its the blindhog method. Google it and you will find the info but it's basically a caustic soda and potassium nitrate mix which seems pretty easy to make up but can be quite dangerous if you have not worked with nasty chemicals before!
I have another recipe to try now so will get some chemicals ordered this week and try those next weekend as long as its not chucking it down.
Its a expensive setup but if like me you have quite a few guns that really need doing then it works out quite cheap overall.
Cannot wait to get the heavy oil off and see how its come out.
yeah, not bad at all...
Always looking for any cheap, interesting, knackered "project" guns. Thanks, JB.
Looks good, all the magic is in the polishing and prep.
Have at least 3 boiling tanks of degreasing solution, to clean, then deep clean, then final clean
Cleanliness is godliness, 1 tank on its own will become too contaminated for best results with the first gun, you need to degrease and rinse leaving the crap in tank 1, repeat with tank 2 leaving less residual crap in there so when it goes into tank 3 it’s almost totally clean and there is next to no contamination when the piece comes out for its final rinse
Then have at least 2 ideally 3 blacking tanks with a hot rinse tank in between so you can black at the minimum temp for the first pass, then mid temp and finally at your top temp that will give you the professional depth of colour
All the pits or scratches visible after polishing are ten times as obvious after blacking so don’t shortcut the polish and always the more you degrease the better the results. Also the cleaner parts are when they go into the blacking solution the longer it will last.
Cleanliness is godliness....
And wear PPE, hospital is horrible.
A man can always use more alcohol, tobacco and firearms.