Have perused many forums and threads and have not read of any dealing with fume bluing. Phillip Pilkington got me interested decades ago, and was always stymied by the lack of availability of one of the chemicals required to try his method. Nuff said on that, than I had a boon granted me yesterday. Itching to try the process. Here is the question. Have any of you made this bluing attempt or have any experience with same? Any results or suggestions, recommendations are appreciated.

Thanks,

Stephen

No but I have read about it. I think you can fume blue with Nitric acid, or just the regular rust blue solution, which is basically nitric, to make fumes. Maybe muriatic acid from the hardware store will work; it will certainly rust steel if it's fumes are around.

I remember that article. He used Nitric and Hydrochloric acid, both very concentrated, and experimented with slight variations--1 drop of one vs. 1 of the other, 2 of the other, etc., IIRC. As I remember, the hydrochloric acid etched the metal surfaces and the nitric acid formed the oxide layer that was boiled and carded off. The process was done in an enclosure. I don't remember whether he used water for humidity (I would assume so). Sorry I can't remember any more details.

Clarence

I built a vertical box, it had a 100 watt light bulb for a heat source under a bowl of water in the bottom of the box, a 25 Watt light bulb in the center and hooks to hang stuff on. I also had a small fan that I used on ocassion to circulate air..I only used available bluing solutions and one I put together from an old world recipe...It was Ok and I played with it until it worked, but outside weather seemed to be a problem?? but maybe not...Sometimes it only blued the lower half and the upper was a mess and had to be redone, In short it was a pain in the kazoo, for my flying by the seat of the pants rust bluing...

I am of the opinnion that rust blueing is difficult and that those that do it day in and day out are the best in the trade, those that do it on ocassions are less apt, and those, like me, that do it maybe twice a year are not nearly as good at it???

I also think perhaps a horizontal box might work better...

Not much help here but thats my one time experience, I now use the box for drying only, both wood and metal, and I rust blue small parts and prefer Mark Lees solution and no water in the pan, it works great, never tried a complete gun however...

Yes, Clamor, that is for rust bluing where you actually swab the metal with the acid. With fume bluing, the acid forms a cloud which makes the metal rust; the solution is not actually in contact with the metal. As Ray said, it might be hard to make work well. I would use a horizontal box too.

Fume bluing discussed:

http://www.assra.com/cgi-bin/y....pl?num=1282132883/0

craigster, et al,

Thanks all for comments and the link to fuming discussion. I am going to brave it and will post, at a later date, my experiences. Have done some swab-on, boil, card rust bluing and the sticky issue, at least to me, was the nooks and crannies as one mentioned. I imagine no exposed part could possibly escape the fumes in a properly constructed box. Plexiglass is the recommended box material for viewing progress without loosing any fumes. The chemicals will turn your shop brown - guaranteed. Use your neighbor's shop and plead innocent.

Stephen