Bluing redux

The next day was a Sunday and we were expecting a tropical storm. Heavy rains were scheduled for the entire day.

We spent a few hours preparing for the storm (and getting some stuff inside the garage)/

I wanted to finish with the bluing, so I decided to lock myself up in the garage and work on it.

I changed my setup a bit, and included a water boiling station, so I wouldn't have to run to the kitchen to boil the parts in the middle of the rain.


I also added more lights and another fan.

I decided to "cook" the slides in 2 batches, not to weaken the bath. I also used a digital thermometer to make sure I was in the 292 to 295 F range. I was extra careful with the timings making sure all the parts would spent exactly the same time inside the bath.

Didn't take any pics during the bath, not risk "staining" the slides by keeping them too long outside the bath.


Things were looking promising after the water boiling session.

I also did the extractors, the sight (after fixing the ding I hadn't seen before), a hammer and some parts from the SSV project that I was expecting to re-use in this project.



Also, did the safeties, but this time I "cooked" them 1/2 the time at 295F and 1/2 at 310F. Only one caveat, I didn't remove the previous bluing. I cleaned them well, but left the previous bluing. This was a mistake.

After a couple of hours in oil, I was happy with the results...























All parts were the same color. That night I was a happy camper...

Little I knew there would be trouble ahead...

more to come...