I did this up for a friend. A 27-2 that had seen some better days but the bore and cyl were in great shape. Some light rust and pits in the metal, blue loss, dings and scratches,,so a good candidate.

I made a set of grips for him. Amer Walnut, just magna style w/a different checkering pattern on them. The wood I sliced off of a forend blank I've had sitting around for just shy of 40yrs. So I figured I better get to using some of this stuff or I never will. Still enough left for a forend yet out of it I think.

Cleaned up the metal and engraved it with a light scroll pattern. The only gold I put in it was a single band at the rear edge of the cylinder and a front sight insert in gold. Both 24k.

I took care of some end shake in the gun by peening the cylinder crane out and refitting. Two of the chambers were OOT. So a bit of careful peening of those ratchet teeth brought those two back in line.

Lots of rust on the internal parts and inside the frame but that cleaned up OK.

I wanted to keep the high gloss polish effect as much as possible in the reblue. I don't hot salt blue anymore, which is the easiest way to achieve that. But with the right techniques and prep, rust blue can achieve the same look.

So here are a few pics of the blue process and a couple of some of the parts as done. One or two of the final assembled piece.
I think he'll like it.


Some of the parts with the Express Rust blue soln coating on them ready for a trip into the boiling water.
Note the high tech equipment and setting.


Frame and parts just out of the boiling water. The brown rust coating changed over to a blue/black 'rust'. The fine loose coating needing to be carded now to reveal the color underneath.


The stove top boiling tank,,, Actually an aluminum bread pan.
Great for pistols and other small items.
A tin can w/ holes punched in it to hold small parts like screws and pins.
You can see some of the parts down in there. Yes they're just lying on the bottom. Water looks like it's about done it's job! Usually needs to be changed out after a couple cycles or so.


Frame after last carding and a light coat of oil on it smeared around.


Cylinder the same


BBl after last carding. I have to repolish the gold inlay carefully here yet to brighten it back up. The carding process and to some extent the bluing too does dull them a little. Either 0000 steel wool or sometimes just a very soft, fine eraser does it. Nothing coarse like a pencil or ink eraser.


Here it is all assembled.
Engraving time was just at 50hrs.,,not all 8, 10 & 14hr days anymore though!
I didn't keep track of the grips and checkering time, but add that in too.
Add in for bluing, a few inches or gold wire and a couple hrs misc for dis-assembly and reassembly (pull bbl and put it back on are in there), you can get an idea of costs if you start applying what you think the engraver is worth /per hr.

A couple other misc pics,, grips and small internals. The parts as they came from the gun w/quite a bit of rust.

Thats amazing

This is truly some beautiful work.

I can’t even begin to fathom the intricacies of such a project.

Your friend has a very good friend!!

Thank you so much for sharing.

Thank you so much for sharing how you cleaned up
and Engraved that S&W 27-3.

I like the Engraved pattern too!

I really enjoyed the photo essay on the process
of fixing up the Revolver.

Thank you for taking the time to take the
pictures.

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SD social distanc'n since 1889

You obviously LOVE doing this, being that it must have been a quite tedious process and it came out spectacular! You tool a piece of junk and magically turned it into a beautiful heirloom. All I can say is that I HOPE he appreciates everything you have done.

It's simply AWESOME !
Gary

Awesome work!! A job more than well done. hardcase60

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You want me to do what?

I really enjoyed this thread and the amazing work you did to restore that M27 far beyond what it looked like when it left the factory. That revolver really was worth the effort, awesome work.

Amazing !!
I've browned a couple muzzleloader barrels and parts but never tried the rust blue. Beautiful work ,,, Thanks for sharing .

Duhh , must have double tapped the go button ..

But it's still outstanding work !!

Wow you sir are truly a craftsman!

That's quite impressive!

Thanks so much for posting!

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Dave Brown
SWCA #3279

You created a sweet looking gun for your friend. The grips came out nice also. You have shared a lot your work with us over the years and i’m always amazed. Larry

Very nice!

I am normally not a fan at all of any engraving, but I will make an exception for this work of art.

The like button isn't enough, we need a WOW for that work. How many rusting cycles did it take ? Mark

That is ART in its most pure form!

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"lets be careful out there"

You have a great talent!

Will you be MY friend? Wow!

Could the barrel and frame be rust blued without taking them apart?

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DRB #2276

Great job.

Very nice work!

Wonderful work and surely a labor of friendship. I have been involved with firearms and machining for the better part of four decades and continually find myself smiling when I see what a craftsman can do with simple tools and time. Do you offer a classes? Sign me up. Thank you for sharing.

As said above. You are a craftsman!

That's beautiful work!!

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Shot placement is key!!

Wow just, wow. That is a beautiful job. I also use the express blue system but mine don't come out that nice. I'm even more careful about the boiling step. My parts are suspended. Guess I just need to keep trying. Those grips are outstanding, beautiful checkering.

Wow

Thank you for all the nice comments an 'likes' on the project. I appreciate it.

The rust blue is the Express or Quick Rust type. That to avoid any excess time sitting and letting the soln etch the surface and produce the normally seen matted look to rust blue.

Keeping the high polish under any rust blue process is a battle of rusting times vs producing a rust coating valuable enough to get you a layer of color after the boiling and carding.
Several other things play into it including the soln used, the carding material, ect.

The process itself will get you 'blued steel' w/o too much of a problem.
But lots of patience & trial and error, experience, to produce a very precise desired effect.

This particular one was blued in 5 cycles (rusting/boiling/carding)
That's about standard for using an Express Rust formula in my experience to complete a job.
But with that you could get anything from a high polish blue to a very matted look within the same 5 cycles. It's just in how it's applied and what you are using and on what.

Express rust can be somewhat of a pain to work with at times as it does not want to blue everything out there like a Slow Rust blue can usually accomplish.
You are limited to fewer rusting solutions with Express than Slow Rust. Plus they must react and produce the rust on the surface immediately when applied (Express/Quick).

If the steel won't take the particular soln you have very well and you'r getting 'off' colors like reddish streaks and even greens. What to do now?
The old formula's standbys like Belgian Blue and Bakers Formula used Mercury BiChloride in them. They worked very well. Almost too well for a high polish blue!

Spot hardened areas as on some 1911 slides, small case hardened parts especially like 03 bolt shroud & safety parts like to blue nicely and then rub off easily when Express blued. Especially the latter.
Pre-etch by warming the parts and a swabbing with weak acid soln will better the situation and help the blue 'take'.
But there goes your nice polish if you intended it to be there in the first place.
Pre-etch was a very common prep for rust blue at one time in the factorys. A very weak acid soln dunk or even a quick bath in ferric chloride soln, also very weak, etches the surfaces an even gray and knock down most of the polishing lines pretty well. The bluing soln takes extremely well to these prepped surfaces. But again,,there goes any high polish if it was there to begin with.

Most people Slow rust blue now and I do most of my work that way too. A high polish blue can be gotten with these as well. Quicker rusting cycles, less rust per cycle, soln's that etch very little, multiple cycles to produce color where only a handful would normally be necessary for a nice blue.
Finer and finer carding matr'l and even diluting the rusting soln's as the final cycles are applied to really weaken the rusting action but still produce some to add just a bit of color each cycle with no etching.

Yes you can rust blue the bbl and frame while still together as an assembly.
One reason I take them apart is that it's easier to engrave the parts that way.
The other is that very often the bbl threads were swabbed with grease before assembly. That grease or oil is still in there. When the assembly goes through the boiling water cycle, the grease or old oil in there liquifys and starts to run out of the joint. It runs out even the smallest amt and spoils the blue. No matter how many times you go back over the spot, clean it, acetone, whatever, that area will not blue. The juncture of the bbl and frame will usually show a bright spot w/ maybe a little off color to it like a brown tint. Sometimes the oil/grease contaminates the greater area around the joint and you have off color blue or none in spots.
Another problem is dragging that grease/oil,,as small as it may seem, onto your carding wheel or steel wool as you card the piece and then you are smearing the oil all over the frame and bbl as you card.
You've also contaminated the carding wheel with oil.
Recoating the piece with soln,,you've probably contaminated the soln itself and the applicator. The water tank too if it isn't already from the prior boiling where the oil first emerged.
..and that's all it takes to make sure you have spoiled a rustblue job. A tiny amt of oil or grease like that.

Never use the rusting soln right out of the mfg'r container. Pour a little,,enough for part of the job,,into a smaller container and work from there. If you contaminate it, dump it AND the container.
If you dump it over (who would have done that before) you won't have lost much.
All those empty pill bottles we oldsters have around work great for this.

Never pour used soln back into the mother container. You could be pouring some oil back in with it.
That yellow container in one of the pics is just that, a pill bottle w/rusting soln in it I'm using to do this job. I use an 'acid brush' to apply the soln to the parts. Some people use a swab made up of T-shirt mtrl. What ever works. Just make sure it's clean like everything else.

If there's any soln left over, I cap it and keep it (I hate throwing things out!). I use it for quick and dirty jobs like if I need to blue a couple of screw heads or something like that. Never does it get used on a 'new' project.

Grips are 24 LPI checkered IIRC. I use an MMC to layout the pattern and then finish things up w/hand tools.
I started using the MMC back in the 70's when I did a lot of checkering, more than I liked to do. But it was work!
Now I just do what I need for the projects I get involved in.
The power checkering tool cuts (my) time by about 1/3 to 1/2 on most any pattern over doing it completely w/hand tools. Quite a time saver when you're looking at 15 to 20hrs of checkering or more,,and maybe not looking forward to it too much!
Some can do the complete job with the power tool but I've never been able to accomplish that feat.

The borders/edges I cut in by hand w/ a simple V gouge (vernier?). No pattern to start with, I just draw something out on the surface lightly with one of those pencils that marks on everything. It swipes right off if it doesn't look right or I want to change it.
I was going to put Medallions in the grips but the grain looked nice there so I left them as is. I can always add them if he doesn't like 'em. Or put the beat up originals back on for him!

Grips finished with Homer Formbys Tung Oil Varnish. Underneath I stained them with a couple different colors. One coat of Walnut Laurel Mtn stock stain which is a solvent base dye not an oil stain.
Then sanded in a couple coats of the HF Tung Oil to fill it.
Then alternated with a light coating of Oil Stain (some kind of Chestnut or similar color off the shelf stuff) and a rubbed on coating of HF.
Probably 4 coats of that.
Not the bowling pin/piano finish some strive for. But rather a nicely filled and not to glaringly bright finish.
I always stain wood that I work with. I can't recall the last time I finished up anything in walnut or maple that wasn't stained to my liking.
Using an Oil stain and an solvent dye stain on top of each other isn't supposed to be quite wood finishing PC. Neither is staining in betw coats of varnish finish w/ oil stain, but they all have a specific purpose and work out nicely. Thin coats,,let things dry.

Hope this helps out.
Thanks again..

Thank you for taking the time to share your knowledge. Mark

That is some really beautiful work you did for your friend man! You are truly an artist. And thanks for sharing with us here on the boards!

Great looking work & thank you for the explanation on blueing. I found that really interesting.

Cory

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Cory
SWCA #3015 SWHF #465

yea, you are a master,,,,,,,,,,,,,

I missed this one the first time around. Beautiful work!!!

Thanks for sharing,

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Richard
Engraved S&W fan

This great thread needs another run at the top.

...wonderful gun ...wonderful engraving ... wonderful write-up and photo essay on a cool bluing process.

Thanks for sharing,

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Richard
Engraved S&W fan

Thanks for bringing this back Richard. Newer members didn’t have the opportunity to see this originally. It amazes me sometimes how much knowledge and expertise resides in our membership.

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SWCA 3255 SWHF 615

That revolver turned out wonderfully, thanks for showing us and telling us about the process.

Thanks Richard.
I missed it the first time.
He does have talent.
Nice guy to boot

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Paul
S&WCA #2726

The way they all should look!!

Awesome work

Well you are a true artist , well done Sir !

You Sir, are one talented individual.

Outstanding, simply outstanding!!!!!

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Pete
I ain't no fortunate son