I just got one of my dads old guns, a repro 1860 cap&ball revolver that has been neglected the past few years. It has a color case hardened frame but has some rust spots on it. The barrel and cylinder are in worse shape but I'll clean them up and rust blue them soon. I want to re color case harden the frame but that is going to have to wait for a bit as I'm not set up to do that just yet (frankly I'm pushing it to do the barrel and cyl now but I remember when dad got this about 40 years ago and it looks horrible as it is) Anyway, are there any tricks to cleaning up color case hardening? I don't want to use steel wool lest it remove more of the colors and if I can just get the rust cleaned off the frame may not look that bad.

Thanks!

Mark

Mark,
I have had some success on light surface rust with a product called Krazy Kloth #54. I'm sure it is available in many stores but I buy it from this site:

http://www.cadieproducts.com/cleaning_cloths_2.html

It doesn't seem to hurt bluing but I would not want to leave the chemical on the surface too long. I haven't tried it on color cased surfaces so suggest going slowly on a protected area first.

The color is just oxide , a thin layer .About the only thing you can do is to use 0000 steel wool and oil.Any type of abrasive will damage the color.