Which oil or other substance do you use after bluing to stop any rusting. I have heard some use just regular motor oil, others use some type of water soluble oil in the last rinse, while someone else told me to use "gun oil". Any advice would be put to good use........Grant.

Oldmodel70, after bluing I boil the parts for 15 minutes in destiled water, dry them and coat everything with balistol oil. Never had a problem with rust after this treament.

Bongo

I've boiled the fresh blued parts in clean water and dried with a blast of compressed air then slobbered liberly (or dipped in) Auto Transmission Fluid while still too hot to handle for 37 years. It works.

I got this formula from Jim Dubell and use it. 1/2 ATF fluid and 1/2 diesel. Mixem up in a long tank. After bluing I soak all parts for a couple of days. Seems to work very well.

We normally blue 15-20,000 parts every year and we use a 100% Synthetic coolant for our cold rinse. It's called Trim E206 and you can get this through J&L and it mixes up at a ratio of about 10-1 with water. After that we spray them down with Rem Oil. Never had any problems with any of our parts, even after they been in our shipping cabinets for months. Excellent stuff. Just make sure not to get any Rem Oil on parts before they go in the blueing solution. Even the detergent that you run in your hot tank won't get that oil off because it has Teflon in it.

I agree with bongo500. The best way is to boil the part or barrel with clean or distilled water for a 10 to 15 minute range before blowing the part off and then soaking it in oil for about 1 to 2 weeks to allow the oil to soak into the blue. Brownells oil also works really well to let your parts soak in. But ATF and diesel is a lot cheaper. The blue cures during this process. ATF oil and diesel works really well because it is light and allows to seep into the slots and holes. Make sure the parts are cleaned well and push several patches through the bore of the barrel in order to get the blue salts out of the bore. I saw one barrel that was ruined because the bore was not cleaned after bluing.

Also cleaning your parts with Laquer thinner works great to remove the oil from the parts. After cleaning them, use rubber gloves so you don't get any oil onto the part. Even oil from your fingures can cause a problem with bluing parts.

Brownell's recommendation is NOT to use distilled water unless one knows specifically if glass coils versus copper coils were used.

They assert that if copper coil distilled water is used, then some of the copper may have an adverse affect on the bluing process and create blotty or splotty results.

I am by no means an expert, however, it appears to be a plausible recommendation.

Any thoughts on that?

[ 08-02-2002, 05:05: Message edited by: Alex Szabo ]

I do know that parts that are EDM machined must be cleaned up around the surface the wire touched or they will turn out orange during the bluing process. The wire leaves a copper residue on it. So I am assuming that if distilled water contains copper it will attract to the metal. I have never heard of this but doesn't mean that it is not so. Brownells has been around a long time, so they know what they are talking about. I would worry about it if you are cleaning parts prior to bluing but not really after because the blue is already attached. Anything will contaminate blueing salts. Thats interesting.

After bluing I boil the parts in distilled water for 10 to 15 minutes. When I remove the parts from the boiling water tank I blow them off with compressed air, dip them in water soluble oil for minimum of 20 minutes then suspend above the oil tank to drain.

I am careful to not handle the parts for 24 to 48 hours as the bluing is delicate at this point. The next day I will generally spray the suspended parts with more water soluble oil from a little hand held pump spray bottle.

The second day I remove the parts, wipe them down with paper towels and apply ATF oil and assemble.

One very important point...............caustic hot bluing normally continues to get darker and "cure" for at least 24 hours after the parts are removed from the tank...........as long as you dont apply any oil with high tech rust inhibitors in it............if you spray it down with something like WD-40 it will kill the the after rusting effect (remember were working with black oxide which is black rust)or degrade the after bluing darkening and "curing".........I'll probably get flamed on this and I dont have any scientific proof but I feel it is one of my best "secrets" learned in bluing.

I know several gunsmiths who blue on a regular basis and all of us use slightly differant techniques and end up with good results. So the above information is not considered THE way to do it, it is considered A way to do it.

Just addressing the copper question---

Copper kills bluing salts in minutes. Copper distilled water can be used but that tank of expensive salts won't last near as long and the color will not be "right".

When I lived and worked in Colorado I used snow melt water when the season was right and de-ionized water from Culligan in the summer.

Don't any of you guys use Brownells blueing salt neutralizer? Water won't kill the blueing salts, whether it's distilled or otherwise. We normally don't blue assembled parts, so there is not a need for us to incorporate this into our process, but when we blue barreled actions, they are always boiled out for at least an hour with a neutralizer. If you don't do this, the chances are real high that your going to have some salt seepage down the road.

Triggerguard 1

When I blue a barreled action it is usually one I have barreled. All of my barrel work includes truing the action face and equal contact of the action ring and torque ring plus a good anti seize grease usually prevents any salts from penetrating the threads, so a hot water boil has worked for me.

When I rebarrel actions other than Mauser or when I'm bluing other assemblys I use a neutralizer such as Brownells.