Thread: Blued steel?

Originally Posted by Maxi

Here you go.

Attachment 96184

Looks great,How was it done?

Originally Posted by pixelfixed

Looks great,How was it done?

Birchwood cold blue. Make sure your steel is clean and polished and wear gloves. I taped it all off, and then used a q tip. I learned that you don't need to rub the bluing compound back and forth. No "scrubbing" is necessary. Wipe one in one good saturated clean stroke, and let the bluing do it's work.

This particular one has 3 coats - Havachat - each successive coat makes the steel darker. This one is almost black.

Funny how the timing thing works sometimes. I just finished rust bluing a tang and spine on a W&B literally a few days ago-- I was bluing a receiver and decided to throw it in. It still looks like hell, but here it is--







Those pics are pretty bad, too, I'm afraid.

The red on the blade is nail varnish to keep the blade's polish in somewhat decent shape. It seemingly didnt do a very good job, it will need to be repolished. The blade faces have dark areas from the metal reacting to the acid in the water.

Rust bluing is great, its a beautiful durable finish, but I'm not sure if its really worth the trouble for razors, unless you feel like doing it and happen to be bluing some stuff anyway-- it might be a bit overkill. Well, it might be overkill if youre just doing a tang and spine, if you have a good blade in ugly shape with really deep pitting it may be worth doing the whole blade if you like the look. Its also a great way to get familiar with the process if you feel you might want to use it on some guns in the future. Its well worth the trouble on firearms, IMO.

Heres a thread I started quite a while back that have some examples of full blades that were rust blued.

http://straightrazorpalace.com/works...ed-blades.html

Makes you wonder how Wacker did this,is almost like a black chrome coating of sorts.

Originally Posted by pixelfixed

Makes you wonder how Wacker did this,is almost like a black chrome coating of sorts.

I cant see it that well, but I think it might be paint or enamel.

No pete,it is not paint or enamel.

Originally Posted by pixelfixed

No pete,it is not paint or enamel.

Dunno then. It looks just semi gloss black in that pic. If it looks kind of like the revolvers in the link I'm about to post they could have polished it up to a near mirror and dip blued it, if you feel that they would have gone to the trouble.

Mirror Blue - show me your Guns

Originally Posted by Pete_S

I cant see it that well, but I think it might be paint or enamel.

Looks like something akin to nickel boron nitride coating...

parkerizing? how do they make guns /black/ ?

Originally Posted by ezpz

parkerizing? how do they make guns /black/ ?

You can do a great deal to steel when you can heat up the stuff (don't do that to a razor btw). Hot bluing will look a great deal better than cold blue.

Anyway - I just gave it a shot to see how it would turn out - I didn't try to do the best job - just took a spare blade to see how it would take, and how it would look. The photos don't do it justice.

I got to figure something out. I just can't keep my blades looking polished and I hate the "spotted" look lol. Mustard worked well too lol. Anyway here's what I used.