"Ignoramus9556" wrote in message
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On 2010-05-08, Steve Lusardi wrote:
Iggy,

This depends on the investment you want to make. If it's a quick and
dirty, go to Brownells and get a small bottle of gun black. Of
course it looks like it is, a patch job. If you want to do it right,
you must repolish to white metal and reblue in a salt bath at 295
F. The blueing salt can also be purchased from Brownells. If you do
not return to white metal, you will get blotching. If you want to do
the latter, read a book, it can be tricky, but not difficult. I used
to do it a lot, but I no longer maintain a salt bath. the key is
clean, clean and very, very clean. Not even skin oil. So we are
talking about white cotton gloves. Steve

Steve, thanks, this is a cheap little kids shotgun. Not worth the
hassle of a salt bath.

i

Iggy, FWIW, and to expand on what Steve says about hot-tank bluing, if
someone recommends a cold-rust blue to you, which doesn't require the tanks,
even that will be very blotchy if you don't get rid of ALL of the rust and
get back down to white metal. Cold-rust bluing (or browning or blacking --
you can get several different colors with different solutions) does not work
right where there's existing rust.

I've done cold-rust bluing and browning with good success on a new barrel,
and on tools, but that isn't going to do it for you any more than
hot-tanking is. As Steve says, your best bet is to get one of the quick
blacking solutions from Brownells and see how good you are at doing makeup.
d8-)

--
Ed Huntress



"Ignoramus9556" wrote in message
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I have a little 20 gauge shotgun that has some rust on the barrel. It
is functional despite that, but I would like to clean it up a bit. I
would like to know what is the proper procedure. I guess I can remove
rust and even polish it a bit, but then I would somehow blacken the
barrel again. Is there anything that you would recommend for this sort
of thing. Thanks

i