Rust Blue isn't difficult to do. It does take a lot of attention to detail though.
Plus it's time consuming when you add it all up.
Any of the paint coat finishes would be much easier and quicker I would imagine though I have never painted a gun myself.
Parkerizing in down the road much like rust bluing w/o some of the repetitive cycle steps of rusting/boiling and carding involved.
Cold bluing I wouldn't consider doing a complete firearm with cold blue though I've seen some done by others that looked quite nice. I just use it for touch-up and occasional coloring of parts. It works very nicely there.
For rust bluing pistols I generally use an aluminum bread baking pan on the stove top as a boiling water tank. Most pistol parts fit in one, Revolvers as well but you generally have to have the bbl off of the frame. The latter is a safe way to do them as you won't have any weeping of oil from the bbl/frame joint that way to spoil the blue.
You can use aluminum or stainless steel for the tank in rust blue with no effect on the finish as it's only boiling water. Unlike hot salt bluing where the 2 metals are not usable as the main tank matr'l.
Slow rust blue or 'Express'/Quick rust blue,,take your pick. They each use their own special rusting solns though.
Here's a couple pics of the pre27 engraved and then rust blued in the above stovetop manner after engraving.
This one is 'Express Rust Blued' using Mark Lee's Express Rust Blue Soln.
You can see the small container of the soln and a brush in the second pic, I warm the parts for application of the soln with a propane torch. Just warm them,,not too hot!.
Coating of rust blue soln on the frame and bbl
Coating of soln on the rest of the parts.
It rusts immedietly (Express) and looks kind of mottled and uneven but thats OK.
Once boiled it turns black/dark blue. Then the metal is 'carded' with either a rotary wire brush (a very fine wire), or sometimes clean steel wool is used 0000 grade. They used to sell hand carding brushes of different sizes and shapes. I used those for many years before setting up a rotary wheel.
Bread pan on the stove. You can see some oil got in the mix somewhere and is floating on the surface. That water is going to have to be dumped after this cycle. To avoid that oil from contaminating the parts as they are lifted from the water, turn the heat way up to get a rolling boil to break up the oil slick. Then you have lessened the chance of oil dragging out on the part(s). Dump the water and clean the tank anyway, change the soln brush and the soln container (the bottle cap in this instance) as well. All sources of the contamination. Never draw your soln straight from the main bottle. You can contaminate that as well real quick and then that's no good to you as well. Always pour out a small amt into another cup, cap or bowl. It's better if you spill it as well as you are not spilling the whole big bottle of the stuff.
( The 'tin can' holds small parts, screws ect. the bottom is punched full of small holes so the water enters and drains. Makes handling those items easy and quick)
And the finished parts stuck together w/the grips on it
rice.
