Does anyone bypass sandpaper and use just media blasting? Either soda or regular media before rust bluing? Trying to make things simple versus sanding everything by hand.

The attractiveness of any finish is dependent on the preperation. Blast it with glass beads and apply the rust blue solution and it'll look like it was blasted with glass beads before bluing. Polish it to 320-400 before bluing and it'll look like there was time and attention paid. Same goes for finishing wood (only I hope you don't try to blue it!).

A quality blue job takes lots of hand work unfortunately. Use backers through every grit, polish to 400 and run over a very fine wire wheel. Look it over in good light and you will see everything you missed.Go back over what you missed starting at 320 grit and then 400 grit again. Wire wheel, look it over and you should be ready to degrease and apply acid.

Thanks!

Taking short cuts with rust blue never works, its a tedious process that requires proper prep.

You can polish the metal by hand to 400 or even 600 grt., then brush it lightly with the finest of wire, that gives the blue a bite and the end result is beautiful but not bead blasted..bead blast is for hot blue to make it resemble rust blue according to some, but its not even close.

Bead blasted metal is full of small pits, small pits hold moisture, and the result is rust. I have had and witnessed bead blasted hot blued guns rust over night in humid, wet, or cold climes. It looks great on closet queens.