Anyone tried home blueing

[555th]

well, today was pretty much a disaster. 555ths yugo krink came out perfect as did some other parts. alot of parts came out crappy brown....my enthusiasm with home blueing is going away..

BigAl...how bout posting some pics of that brown Tabuk Sniper...

The parts that went in first turned out nice, but all of the later stuff looked like a rusty piece of shit.

I'm pretty sure we just got things too hot, We need a thermometer that will go to 300 degrees. Al, I can borrow one from work if you want to give it another shot.

[BigAl]

I'd say too much heat is the problem. i'll snag a better thermometer (or 555th can) and start blasting again.....

[my-rifle]

There's longgggggg discussion we had on home-bluing over here.

http://www.akforum.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=27254

The crappy brown finish should wipe off with a bit of work. You got your mixture too hot is what happened. Spend about $20 on a clip-on broiling thermometer that you can put on the side of your bluing tank. Keep the mixture boiling at 300°. That should be its boiling point. If it boils at a lower temperature, add lye until it comes up to 300°. If it boils at a temp higher than 300°, add distilled water to bring the boiling point down. You may want to make use of a 6' iron pipe for adding water and lye to your bluing tank. That stuff is extremely exothermic.

Also, Brownells used to sell 40" iron bluing tanks for $40. I bought 3 of them. Don't be discouraged. You can do this. It works, and it works well. The only problem is the ramp-up costs - around $150 to start. I use the ammonium nitrate recipe, and my good friend #1bambam uses the nitrate of soda recipe. They both do pretty much the same thing. I've blued six guns so far, and each one has been painless and perfect.

[ammoboy2]

I tried the nitrate soda formulation with the Roebic lye on some very rusty mags I blasted with al oxide media. I learned you have to blast very uniformly and various angles. The mags turned out very well. If I figured out the posting process correctly there should be a picture of the results. I was unable to get the bath to full 255degrees but only to about 225.

[Coils]

They look nice.
Is this the first time doing a blueing job yourself?

[my-rifle]

The first time doing the bluing process myself, this is what I came up with:



And here it is close-up.



This was a tantal - my "low-quality" kit. The process works easily and VERY well.

[Coils]

Looks great, I'm glad you said "easily", I might have to try this sometime.

[BigAl]

ok, i'm going to attempt this again after deer season...

[ammoboy2]

Coils

Yes, that was my first try at blasting or bluing. Working with old rusted mags are a real good practice piece. If you screwup it is no big deal and you can end up with a like new magazine. As you see the worst that can be said is I did not blast enough to get the finish perfectly uniform. The color turned out uniform but the surface finish did not. I was very apprehensive on the mix and my ability but it all turned out well.

[Coils]

Thank you for the reply, I think I'll try this later.