Browning a gun barrel

dhermesc

Well-known Member
Anyone ever "brown" a gun barrel? I gave my 14 year old a muzzleloader kit for Christmas and the barrel is "in the white". I talked to a gun shop about possibly bluing the barrel but they started at $200 and up. Looked up other options and Laurel Mountain Forge seems to have a pretty good product for something like this:


https://traditionsfirearms.com/product/St.-Louis-Hawken-Rifle-Kit-.50-cal-percussion


I looked at Birchwood Casey but to many people seemed to have a lot of issues with both cold bluing and hot bluing.
 
I redid an old shotgun with Laurel Mountain Forge and couldn't be happier. I boiled the brown rust to change it to black, made a really nice blue finish. I had never done it before, just followed the directions, turned out great.
 
There are quite a few lessons on U'tube. Several ways to do it. Go take a look. They cover blue and brown. Close but different chemicals. Most important thing is everything must be oil and grease free!
 
I guess I just learned something. I thought I blued an old double barrel 20 ga. that belonged to the grandpa that showed me the effects of fertilizer on dill plants. It turned out brown. I figured I did something wrong. Guess not; had the wrong agent. I followed the directions on the bottle. Oh well.
 
One of the guys on U'tube did a gun special and he brown first then blue second time. Special finish . Go dig around on there. Might be able to fix it.
 
The browning and blueing is the same process except if you submerge the brown rusted parts in boiling distilled water it turns the brown into black. The more cycles of this you do the blacker the finish will get. One or two rust and carding cycles will give you a nice blue finish, up to five or six times you'll get a deep black. When you have the desired color, use baking soda in hot water to neutralize the acid, this will prevent further rusting, and oil the parts good. A good rust brown or blue is an excellent finish that is even more durable than hot salt blueing. Don't forget to cork the barrel ends before you start to keep the solution out of the inside of the barrel. Surface prep before you apply the acid solution is critical, imperfections in the white metal will look worse after you're done with the process.
 
I seem to remember reading once that in the early days,they used a mixture of urine and iron oxide(rust).True or not? I really have no idea!
 
I have used both the hot and cold methods. If instructions are followed to the T, they both work good.
I have a book here that covers it all. But the kits I have used work very well.
Richard in NW SC
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Bluing and browning are both methods of controlled rust staining on steel. You can get a browning kit from Birchwood or several other outfits and if you follow the direction and METICULOUSLY DEGREASE the barrel it will give an acceptable finish. This is a cold process, not a hot process. But, warming the barrel will make a life a whole lot easier. I mean warm to the touch, not hot. THe big thing is DEGREASING. And if you use steel wool in the process, remember you have to degrease that before touching the metal too.
 
Bluing is one of the least understood and most BSed subjects you can bring up on here, right up there with electrical grounding, LOL. Did you know that the finest of custom made guns are cold blued??? I ran both a hot bluing set up and did cold process bluing as part of my 'smithing business. Does that make me an expert? nope! I learned with almost every batch or job I did. I will tell you that a quality bluing job no matter if cold or hot tank is about 2% what product you use, 49% prep work and 49% techniques. Great quality jobs that occur with little prep or knowledge are advertising lore and urban legend,, period. I got so tired of people cussing Birchwood Casey (mainly because that is what Kmart and wally mart sells) that I cold blued a Stevens 22 with it just to show the nay sayers who came to the shop what could be done with it. If you don't want to spend the time to learn how and then preform the considerable effort to do a prim and proper cold bluing job I recommend a product called "Oxpho" from Brownells It is made specifically for low prep quickly type jobs. Another excellent (and cheap) way to achieve an excellent cold blue is with ordinary muratic acid and what is called a fume box, you don't simply apply muratic directly to the gun parts!!.You should be able to google fume box bluing and get the dope on it.
 
I used the Birchwood Casey Browning on my muzzleloader when I built the kit. As was said follow the directions exactly and degrease as
directed. Mine came out very well in my opinion.I'm quite proud of the results.
 
(quoted from post at 12:12:46 01/04/17) Bluing is one of the least understood and most BSed subjects you can bring up on here, right up there with electrical grounding, LOL. Did you know that the finest of custom made guns are cold blued??? I ran both a hot bluing set up and did cold process bluing as part of my 'smithing business. Does that make me an expert? nope! I learned with almost every batch or job I did. I will tell you that a quality bluing job no matter if cold or hot tank is about 2% what product you use, 49% prep work and 49% techniques. Great quality jobs that occur with little prep or knowledge are advertising lore and urban legend,, period. I got so tired of people cussing Birchwood Casey (mainly because that is what Kmart and wally mart sells) that I cold blued a Stevens 22 with it just to show the nay sayers who came to the shop what could be done with it. If you don't want to spend the time to learn how and then preform the considerable effort to do a prim and proper cold bluing job I recommend a product called "Oxpho" from Brownells It is made specifically for low prep quickly type jobs. Another excellent (and cheap) way to achieve an excellent cold blue is with ordinary muratic acid and what is called a fume box, you don't simply apply muratic directly to the gun parts!!.You should be able to google fume box bluing and get the dope on it.

Well said Butch! Oxpho is great stuff. Anyone really wants to get into this, get all the volumes of Brownells "Gunsmith Kinks" and start reading.
 
Laurel Mountain Forge has the degreaser as part of the browning product - not something you do prior to browning. People that use it claim that alone makes it many times easier to use than Birchwood Casey.
 

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