I do have a couple of gallons of distilled water. I'll try almost anything at this point. Thanks!
Rust bluing is an interesting idea. I looked it up on wikipedia. This is probably too much of a tangent (and perhaps a silly question) but I wonder why they chose to do rust bluing instead of hot bluing.
Can't remember. Maybe materials/facilities/fear of ruining the temper. Doing search on bluing this site will bring you few blued blades.