Young Man Afraid Of His Horses

Sharps40

Senior Member
Time to blacken some small parts.

A wet coat of pilkingtons. 1 hour rust in the damp box at 80% humidity and warm and then a light coat followed by 2 more hours in the damp box. Boil. Card (with 0000 steel wool and no, I never degrease the steel wool nor do I do much with degreasing my hands nor do I use special super clean space comet pure water.....and I really never have problems with the finish.....over all its easy. Wipe it....wait....boil, scrub, wipe....wait....etc.....No magic....just clean hands and clean steel and good acid and good humidity and you'll get very good rust.). Recoat lightly with pilkintons and let it all in the damp box for 12 hours. Boil. Card. and ... repeat about 3 to 6 12 hour rust cycles and it'll be nicely grey black and very durable.


The parts.

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The Damp Box.

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Humidity and warmth provided via small crock pot of water with low, med and high settings as needed.

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Sharps40

Senior Member
Rust blue is a satin finish. Not quite black. Not quite grey. But always, not shiny. Over the years I've found it a serious waste of time to polish beyond 220g for rust blue. And, as on this gun where there is just fine pitting, and mostly at the corners and edges where removing it would change the shape on one side but not the other, spoiling the lines.....a 100g finish applied with a random orbit sander is very effective at hiding the small damages accumulated over the years as the random pattern seemingly blends out the pits in the final finish. I've filed and sanded out what I can without changing shapes, lines or removing letters or dishing out screw holes, the rest will be blended as much as possible into the final satin finish.

Here, the first kiss with the jitter bug. I'll hit it once more after the small parts are blackened which allows me to pay full attention to blackening and boiling and carding this one large piece.

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Sharps40

Senior Member
The first pass, 3 hours rusting. All subsequent passes between boiling will be 12 hours. Carding with 0000 steel wool will remove 95% of this first bloom of black color, leaving only the tightest bonded oxides in place to color the steel.

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Sharps40

Senior Member
The rust on the small parts is very fine grained and coming along nicely.

Here, parts in the damp box....

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And here, the parts in the iron pan just before boiling in tap water.

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Sharps40

Senior Member
Small parts are done including the heads and tails of the screws. I hate rust bluing screw heads. But, they's done. Now to mull on it and decide if the main body and barrel will be black or brown.

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Sharps40

Senior Member
Go rust Young Man.

We'll be back when its done. Many 12 hour waits with boiling and carding and rusting again. Maybe done by this week or weekend and ready for final assembly.

Swirrlygigged for blue removal and to hide some of the pitting...

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3 minutes into the rusting process....

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Sharps40

Senior Member
Good red rust turns black when you boil it....ions and all that. Then all but the strongest black oxide cards off under the steel wool.

Good rust right after the boil. It'll card up nicely.

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Sharps40

Senior Member
430 AM wake up. And, its hard to be unhappy with this level of rust.

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Sharps40

Senior Member
Heat, water and ion exchange.....brown to black.

Ready for carding off the fluff

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Second rust looks fantastic, sauce it up with pilkingtons and back in the damp box till 5 PM.

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Sharps40

Senior Member
A quick look. Finishing up a brass pinch nut for the ejector rod housing and need to shorten the brass grip screw a touch. The black got as black as it could in 4 passes, just wouldn't rust more, especially the barrel, so rather than keep building and knocking off the same for no additional color, I stopped the rust and went to oil and assembly. Still fiddling with the grips. If I were to do anything different with this project, it'd be to put on wood grips. I'd loose some of the theme but the urethane is so funky to work with and soft. It was a compromise getting this pattern grip to fit what with moving the grip screw hole as much as I could but not outside the hub of the wheel....etc. We'll see how it holds up. The grips kind of tell me a story with their carving but also irritate me with their fit and finish. Both adding and detracting from the project.

More pics later with some better light and after final tweaking of brass, etc. (9mm cylinder is already fitted and ready....its not rust blued though as the original ruger blue was just perfect and not purple, so I left it as is.)

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Sharps40

Senior Member
Looks good......nya nya nya to the dillybar who thought a horse head was wrong on a gun barrel!
 

Sharps40

Senior Member
Here we go. Grip screw is right length and looks like it'll stay tight....ERH screw shortened and polished and its all in a light coat of RIG. Ready for some sweaty palms and holster wear on all the high spots. Seems like I should have it loaded with shot and go out lookin for legless lizards in the back yard.

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