Laporte County Most Wanted, Articles B

"Cold" bluing is generally a selenium dioxide based compound that colours steel black, or more often a very dark grey. Metal Finishing Guru. Then, you can put the components back into the bluing tank and increase the temperature until you see the blued steel. And I work alone in my shop, and lack the required (IMO) safety facilities that are needed. It is named after the blue-black appearance of the resulting protective finish. Not blessed with a climate controlled safe. A non-linear resistance property of the blued steel of razor blades, foreshadowing the same property later discovered in semiconductor diode junctions, along with the ready availability of blued steel razor blades, led to the use of razor blades as a detector in crystal set AM radios that were built by servicemen (as foxhole radios) or by prisoners of war during World War II.[8]. Thoroughly degrease the area to be reblued with acetone. -An old container filled with your chosen degreaser (unleaded petrol), -Your desired polished metal object/s (very important! Ill detail why. The parts are then oiled and allowed to stand overnight. You can blue heat-treated parts with no ill effects. Hopefully these concepts suggest caution and diligence for what you are doing. Also: Do not allow the solution to run, drip or sag. Dont pour water in to your bath! Woodworkers doing furniture finishing will use 000 and 0000 wool, and they hate oil on their wool for rubbing down oil finishes. After three coats, washing and drying, the finish was not too bad, considering I was (and am) a rank amateur. Youll get a dark spot right there. It is a difficult product to apply evenly, offers minimal protection and is generally best used for small fast repair jobs and touch-ups.[2][3]. I think DGs method is a lot safer than mine. Youll want to clamp on the barrel directly under the sight youre about to drift out. If youre interested, just ask and I can provide more details. In colloquial use, thin coatings of black oxide are often termed 'gun bluing', while heavier coatings are termed 'black oxide'. Once you see it turn golden, the process has started and colours will change fairly quickly! Youll need some shop rolls, ranging from 180 to 400 grit (typical 4-packs are 180, 240, 320 and 400 grit, in 1, 1.5 or 2. Both ingredients are super cheap. The bottom of the crucible is opened allowing the contents to drop into the rapidly bubbling water. "@context": "http://schema.org/", The robot gives the steel valve seat a quick blast with liquid nitrogen and drops the seat right in place. Alternatively, You could store them in a hard case (like a pelican with a purge) and throw some desiccant packs in there as well. This article was co-authored by wikiHow staff writer. Free shipping for many products! The practice of bluing steel takes time and an exquisite eye for detail. The downsides are: the safety issue, which I laid out above, and which youve made clear. My dad keeps his in a big safe with large desiccant packs that he threw in there. The only way to do that is to heat it until the metal de-magnetises, quench it again, and then temper to the desired hardness. Ill be buying the stainless tubs and chemicals to do it and go for as close to black as I can get. Todos los derechos reservados. If you tempered the steel with a blow torch, set the metal on an anvil or another large steel surface to conduct the heat. You are nitre blueing here. Im not responsible for marital discord as a result of gun projects attempted on the kitchen stove. Get it Feb 25 - 27. The potassium nitrate will liquefy at around this temperature and blue your items at a relatively quick speed. ", not only fun, but also profitable. I hope to someday have good knowledge to pass on to people, heh. You can make your own desiccant packs with kitty litter (I would recommend the unused variety). How to Blue Bluing Steel Using Oven Or Torch and Oil Method. Christopher Graham writes all the content and reviews on this site with the help of his team of hunters and shooters. I wouldnt use this bluing method for these items. When putting water in your boil-out tank, use distilled water if you have water with high mineral content. Its essential to keep stirring the tank to prevent the forming of hot and cold areas. 500F-600F is often all that is needed and the parts can be done over and over again you just have to clean between each attempt. on Introduction. To heat this, I use a Coleman camp stove and a 15# jug of LPG gas. When youre done and have neutralized & washed off the Express Blue #1 solution, you then should spray down the barrel with water-displacing oil. Blue Metal Shell 13 in 1 Welding Torch Nozzle Tip Cleaner For Welder Soldering. The differential cooling causes patterns of colors to appear as well as hardening the part. Add the two together and you have what is akin to rocket fuel in your face a way of oxidizing almost any organic material with insufficient water for cooling into a furious flame. Thanks for the lesson, DG. The process was to coat the gun parts in an acid solution, let the parts rust uniformly, then immerse the parts in boiling water to convert the red oxide Fe2O3 to black oxide Fe3O4, which forms a more protective, stable coating than the red oxide; the boiling water also removes any remaining residue from the applied acid solution (often nitric acid and hydrochloric acid diluted in water). Frequent TTAG commenter Dyspeptic Gunsmith saw the gun above in our postA Garden Gun Cultivates a Newfound Fascinationand answered reader questions about blueing/reblueing a gun thusly: If the rust is very fine and there is still substantial blueing left on the gun, you might want to strip the blueing. You risk a big fire that is self sustaining by the reaction itself. If you do not get crazy and over heat the steel there is no reason to be fearful of the process. 1. polish it very well 2. clean very well 3. quick dip in dilute FeCl (4:1) is what I use 4. rinse in cold running water and pat Hang the trigger group again, re-stock and you should be done. ", https://mgs.edu/making-chisels-skips-newsletter/, http://www.technologystudent.com/equip1/heat1.htm. If cold bluing is the only practical option, the area should be kept oiled to extend the life of the coating as much as possible. What did you use for polishing your pieces and Im guessing you polished then added the chemicals after?Thanks, Joe, Question Heat the gun parts. YouTube - Nitre bluing a few gun parts. Buffing wheels have their purpose, but they take real skill to use without making a mess of guns, starting with the selection of the wheel (theres, oh, at least six types of buffing wheel), choice of type of compound, choice of grit of compound, choice of wheel speed (many buffers have only one speed, and there are some jobs where you really want a 3-phase motor on your buffer with a VFD to adjust the speed down from 1800 or 3600 RPM) and so on. just fyi, the old school method of case hardening steel is to get the piece so hot that a magnet will no longet stick to it and quickly quench it in used motor oil. But since this was my first project, with an inexpensive kit as a learning tool, and as I intend to do this again with a much more expensive kit, my trials and errors and your voice of experience will be very useful the next time around. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Put 600 grit compound on a wheel, use a little too much pressure and youll be gob-smacked at how fast it can cut material off the gun. The wire is extremely small in diameter, so you have to take that into consideration. ", the wrong quality steel. For the process your metal should be nicely polished for the best results.The more shinier the polish the more your end result will glow. You can reassemble the gun after. Thanks, 8 years ago "dateModified": "2022-03-27", Any gun. Either of these two methods is called 'hot bluing'. You can use a heat gun, a blow dryer, or a torch for this. A couple bottles of aged bourbon minimum. Just take them from the comments he posts. Water is great for rapidly quenching the hot metal, but it could cause thin steel to distort or crack. This process was repeated until the desired depth of color was achieved or the metal simply did not color further. Although the steel parts, such as anOrdains watch hands, are near enough miniscule, each Polish to at least 400 grit. on Introduction. Oil-free steel wool is also sold by woodworking shops. Every true outdoorsmans dream! Let them cool down as you take a closer look at the bluing effect. If you havent done it before, wait until I mention some items about it. I use kerosene to wet my paper from 500 on up. In this case cooking oil, rather than gun oil, acts to displace water and prevent rust. "I am nearly 16 and can not wait until I have my drivers license. A few safety items: kitty litter (I would recommend the unused variety). On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Blue Mark the sharpened edge with a crayon. Dont just leave them on a surface that could corrode or burn), get a new patch into the hemostats, soak, wring out, and keep going. It is usually inadvisable to use cold bluing as a touch-up where friction is present. ], Its nice when something can be re-used a time or two, especially when used in diversified ways. Once you get the colour you want, go outside to your oil container and fully quench your object into the oil! When you add water to a hot salt tank, you get an explosion of steam, and you need to develop some skill in adding the water with a very fine copper pipe on your water hose to prevent steam blow-outs spattering salts all over you. Alternatively. Commercial products are widely sold in small bottles for cold bluing firearms, and these products are primarily used by individual gun owners for implementing small touch-ups to a gun's finish, to prevent a small scratch from becoming a major source of rust on a gun over time. If you look at the temps that Tenifur(SP) and Melonite(sp) and early Pakerizing processes used this is nothing. It, too, must be oiled to provide any significant rust resistance. I used Express Blue #1 on lots of guns, where I want something less labor intensive than slow rust blueing (which I wont describe here): most steel wool isnt oil-free. It can soften up some paints and plastics. Sometimes at this point, I come just a fraction away from the heat to go through colours a bit slower. The color is not oxides, when steel is heated at relatively low heats (300-600 degrees Fahrenheit) it changes colors from light yellow to a deep blue, after 600 it turns back to a steel color. Ill be saving this for the future. Thanks for always being so willing to share, Sir. Then remove it from the degreaser, don't be tempted to wipe it off with anything. In the hot salt process, you will need, oh, four to six tanks, only one of which will be the heated blueing salts. If you are referring to torch bluing, the it washes off with water. He started the site to explore the ethics, morality, business, politics, culture, technology, practice, strategy, dangers and fun of guns. Use your torch to bring up The colours range through straw, gold, brown, purple, blue, teal, then black. Your tanks better be tight, your stands for the tanks better be rigid, youd better have top-of-the-line fire extinguishers (NB the plural) available to you. Usually, you can find the manufacturers recommended ratio in the product manual. Most cold blueing agents contain some selenium dioxide in them to enable to them to react at room temps. highfour, case hardening is a bit different from what you describe.. Usually, the steel needs some time in a medium that will allow carbon to penetrate the surface, and we are talking 15 minutes to several hours. Nowadays, even mild steel does have a certain amount of carbon in the alloy, which can explain your observations, if you google "super quench," you should find a waterbased quench that is rumoured to do the same, but in my humble opinion, water can do just that as well. Ok you gotta help me out herewhen I was studying mechanical engineering a good few years back a project I done involved using a compression fit of 1/4" thick plate steel into 1" thick steel rod, both mild steel. It cannot rust any further. Bluing (steel) - Wikipedia Bluing only works on steel, cast iron, or stainless steel parts for protecting against corrosion because it changes iron into Fe3O4; it does not work on non-ferrous material. Hot bluing should never be attempted on aluminium, as it reacts it usually dissolves in the caustic salt bath. For more information on using a blowtorch and protecting the steel, scroll down! Heat the gun parts. Interesting and informative as always. Youre a gunsmith who has a lot of nice guns! 2. How do I do this? Just remove the blue/rust, degrease, dry, then blue/card/boil-out/oil/drain. Cold blues will react with steel at room temperature, but you get more aggressive reactions when you heat the gun to, oh, 150 to 200F. When the first patch gets really funky, then drop that in your plastic garbage container (remember, these patches have been soaked in acid solutions! These processes were later abandoned by major firearm manufacturers as it often took parts days to finish completely, and was very labor-intensive. Bluing is also used in seasoning cast-iron cookware, to render it relatively rust-proof and non-stick. -Something to hold your piece with, make sure it's appropriate to hold it with so it doesn't get too hot in your hands. Blacksmith products to this day may occasionally be found made from blued steel by traditional craftsmen in cultures and segments of society who use that technology either by necessity or choice.[5]. The name of the process actually comes from the blue-black appearance of the black iron oxide.