Can I hot blue a Savage 22/410 over and under? The 22 barrel is soldered to the shotgun barrel but it looks like it was hot blued from the factory.

Are you sure its solder? I have hot blued several and never had a problem.

Its silver but if you have hot blued it, then it must not have lead in it.

Savage barrels were silver soldered. If the silver shows too much we would used a mixture of Tru Oil and Persian blue to cover up the shine along the soldered area. If in question use a sharp pointed knife to check the solder. You can tell if it is soft solder or silver solder. I have found that some of the cheap doubles from other makers can be silver soldered also.

Ok, it doesn't show very much solder at the joints. I am going to rust blue it anyway. Just to save money.

Yup, most of the 24s are silver soldered. If you run a scribe down the joint and it looks yellow and feels hard it's silver. If the scribe runs on something gummy, looks silver or a silver curl of material comes up. It's lead. Silver and lead lines should be cleaned up with a sharp chisel before bluing to hide them. Poor joints can be covered with a Bavarian bluing pencil. (sharpi)

It is definitely silver colored, and none has escaped; they did a good clean job of it. Not enough to catch the point of a scribe.

If in doubt - rust blue !

I already decided to rust blue it.

Ive been told by some expert bluers that if you keep the heat down to a minimum that you can hot blue shotguns?? What say you?

I had my 375 Duracoated before my last Alaskan hunt. I'll never blue a hunting gun again. I'm converted. So easy to take care of. It doesn't matter how wet it gets, no rust.

It isn't the bluing heat that is the problem; solder doesn't melt at bluing solution temps. The lye used to make bluing salts eats lead.

quote:

Originally posted by Atkinson:
Ive been told by some expert bluers that if you keep the heat down to a minimum that you can hot blue shotguns?? What say you?

The caustic soda actually dissolves the lead.

Actually, most of the time the barrels blue in just a couple of minutes when the steel and the salts happen to get to the correct temperature that the particular mixture of steel requires for the chemical reaction to take place.
The age old trick is to bring the tanks to 290F or if you trust your thermometers implicitly, 300F and dump the barrels in for 1 minute and then take them out and shock them in the cold water tank. Then back into the salts for another minute and then shock again. Quite often the barrels will blue in less than three minutes of chemical exposure as they pass through that (sweet spot temperature) that is required for the chemical reaction to take place. This minimum chemical exposure lessons the risk of eating away enough lead to delaminate the bores. It's still risky.