I dislike cold blue products. They don’t look like a blued finish: they look temporary and a little like the stuff has been finger painted on the gun. In my experience, it’s pretty miserable stuff. I wouldn’t use the stuff on a gun of mine.
A complete refinish and Re blue by a good shop will run between $400-500. If you’re trying to finish the work by this Christmas, you may have reached the point where it can’t be finished by Christmas this year by a good shop.
Good refinish jobs are time consuming. Since the good shops are relatively small and in great demand, there is often a substantial wait to get the job done.
Smith can’t reproduce the original finish. They’ve changed their ‘blue’ finish to something that looks painted on and is relatively fragil.
Don’t use steel wool on the gun. Use pure bronze or copper wool.
Bits of the steel wool break off the pad and remain in finish irregularities and set up a new source of rust. Using steel wool creates a situation where you remove existing rust but seed the finish with a brand new coat of rust.
I agree, when I read Christmas I thought that might be difficult.