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Old 03-10-2014, 02:28 AM
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DIY_guy
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This old shotgun does not have a lot of metal parts but the ones it has are in need of some TCL. Rebluing parts isn’t hard and doesn’t take long. What take the most time (and its time well spent) is cleaning and polishing the parts. With a good polish comes a good looking blue. For those that are afraid of cold bluing because they heard of bad results or that cold blues are streaky or blotchy are from people who are doing it wrong. Cold bluing can look like a factory hot blue but you have to put forth the effort.

With the gun disassembled and all the parts tagged and bagged I can get to work.



I'll start with the trigger guard. It’s a little dinged and dented and there are some knicks in the edge and there is overall surface rust. If I were to hit it with some sandpaper or steel wool and then try to blue it I would end up with a crappy finish. Extra time spent polishing pays off in great end results.





Several grades of sandpaper, then steel wool and some time on the flannel buffing wheel and you can get a mirror finish. IF you dont have a bench grinder that you can mount a buffing wheel, you can substitute a drill or drill press with a flannel wheel. The finish work you put into the part shows up through the blue. The bluing doesn’t hide anything, in fact it exposes defects in finish. Spend the time polishing.



I use Dicropan cold blue. Its inexpensive and easy to apply (in this case I used a Qtip). I blue 5 times using 0000 steel wool to buff the part after each application. Steel wool wont remove the blue. It actually makes it shine. The final application of the cold blue is aplied with steel wool.



Before and after.





Then its onto the action latch.







After bluing





Other small parts.















Even the tiniest of screws (like these that hold on the trigger guard) that can be seen on the outside of the gun get the treatment.



Interior parts that cant be seen dont get polished. They simply get cleaned and reblued if they were once blued or they stay unblued if thats how they were on the gun originally.

These many pictures are not really for this blog. there is another reason I take this many photos. Its a tip I will pass along. My eyesight is not that great so I will photograph the parts after polishing and then view the parts on my computer at 10 times their actual scale. It helps me find even the slightest blemish allowing me to see it and correct it. The same thing after blueing. The jumbo sized computer images really help me see the parts and blemishes better. The pictures that make it here are only 2 or 3 times larger than actual scale. Also, you are only seeing a fraction of the pictures I take.

To be continued......
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