I am having a rifle built that has a stainless barrel and I am looking for a finish that resembles conventional rust bluing. Corrosion resistance is not a significant concern, looks are. Suggestions?

Falcon Gun has a finish that comes extremely close.

www.falcongunfinishing.com

I can vouch for their quality.

I have one made to match a high luster blue (they have several shades that look like bluing...tell them what you want).

Garrett

loud-n-b

My father has a Savage 110 circa 1963 that has a stainless barrell on a chromoly action. Both were rust-blued by the factory.

I have found that such bluing is exceedingly rare. Few people, even here at AR, were able to comment on the process (you can do a search on my queries). In the end, I had to speak with a fellow in New England (I forget which state) who was the "un-official" (Savage's term) historian.

This fellow worked for Savage on the floor in the early 60's and confirmed that my father's rifle was a rust-blued, stainless barrel. He did not know of anyone who could re-blue it for my father.

In the end, I used a gunsmith out of Brainerd, MN. who was working for a Gander Mountain. He ultimately sent the gun to Acrometal (sp?), who was purportedly doing a run of stainless barrels that were to be blued. Apparently he had my father's barrel insterted in the end of the production run.

All that is to say that the finished barrel looks very nice, and is about 97% + of its original finish.

The gentlemen from Savage commented that the process was discontinued because they never quite got the proper shade of blue on the stainless. Still, it's a very handsome bluing.

Hope this helps, and good luck!

friar

The falcon gunfinishings looked interesting.

Has anyone else used them?

Thanks,

ddj

www.lauerweaponery.com

I don't know if this is what you're looking for, but these coatings are pretty darn tough.
Blair

quote:

Originally posted by loud-n-boomer:
I am having a rifle built that has a stainless barrel and I am looking for a finish that resembles conventional rust bluing. Corrosion resistance is not a significant concern, looks are. Suggestions?

We ran into this problem on a rifle made by a well known high end rifle builder who "accidentally" made a nice octagon barrel out of Stainless and mounted on a Chrome-Moly action.
As an experiment we took it and had it Powder Coated in black IIRC it was Airborn Powder Coating in OKC that did the barrel.
Had the action done in at a commercial Black Oxide plant and the two ended up matching pretty darned well.
Sorry but I don't have Pics at the moment.

Anyway if I had another stainless barrel I wanted done I'd have it powder coated again. It gave a nice satin Black, not blue finish.......................DJ

Look up DLC (diamond like carbon-coating), has a dark grey/blue to it.

I gather it's possible to fume stainless with concentrated nitric acid before hot bluing as normal.

I have an early M700 in 7mm Rem (1962?)that has what I thought was a regular blued barrel but it's stamped "Stainless Steel", not sure what process they used.

quote:

Originally posted by Recoil Rob:
I have an early M700 in 7mm Rem (1962?)that has what I thought was a regular blued barrel but it's stamped "Stainless Steel", not sure what process they used.

I believe the Remington SS barrels were iron-plated then hot blued.