Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Hot bluing affecting accuracy?

Worth playing catch up here.

Right, wrong, mediocre, foolish or brilliant,....SOME folks don't want the working surfaces of their Carbon steel barrels screwed up with porous iron oxides. Thus, one honors their opinions, doesn't argue, and makes it so.

Had to dig this gear out this AM , and seal up a 45 caliber barrel that's getting browned. I've been sealing barrels with this gear and throwing it in everything but molten nuclear waste, without one hiccup or burp, or fart, for a long time. As I noted when this thread was at the top, we're not talking rocket ship parts.

Some All thread is fitted with a Chamber plug. The Auto AC O-rings are some sorta' silicone that holds up just a BIT better than common Buna N,...I use both



Here's an assortment of muzzle plugs in the larger BP calibers, .45, 40, 375. One can note that while they've had the unmerciful piss blued outta' them, the interior faces are still as machined,...bright metal ( well almost, some of the stuff's been sitting in a drawer for years.) dab of common silicone seals the face of the Nyloc against a common ROOFING WASHER, or something out of the toilet repair parts bin,.... to seal the crown.



Here's a shot of the crown, sealed. Typically the rifle will have been shot, "In the White". The meticulously cleaned bore is filled with the patron's Bullet lube of choice,.....poured in molten around the all thread. The all thread has Heat shrink spaced all along it's length, ....to keep the threads from hitting the lands. If I have no spec. for bullet lube, I just use TC 1000. If you're a lead bullet shooter,.... think about this for just a second or two, you'll deduce that you are "pre-treating" the bore. That's an item that they've been discussing forever, isn't it ?




Particularly in the case of cast bullet guns, I'd say that the concensus is that they clean easier, and foul less.

I have another drawer with .30 and 22 caliber setups, and have used them on all of my own builds, in those calibers.

There it is,....my U.S. $0.02.

GTC

GTC, thanks for the info and pictures.

Pieter

For whatever quirk of geographic choice, most all of the outfits whose Hot Salts operations I pester, horse trade, finagle, and cajole into accessing are WELL above 4,000 FASL.



Low altitude temps there, and enviable.

The last outfit I used is just below 5,000

Up there we run over 400 * F.,....going through propane like there's no tomorrow, on a four tank setup.

The barrel sealing setup pictured / described above saw ZERO problems, through at least 6 bluing runs.

GTC

You have my apologies.....you do know what you are doing.....

My caution was for the typical hobbyist who may not understand what they are getting into....


and yes my altitude here is just under 500ft, I usually blue around 275-290 degrees.

No offense taken, to any and all,...this is one of the FINEST pastimes going, the building / rebuilding of accurate rifles. It's in this realm of dialogue that REAL advances can be disseminated and good "dope" distributed. Humbly going on record to state that I've learned a whole lot here on this forum, and tend to read more than I post these days.

Funny vignette regarding the "two tone" effect that plugging the muzzle with a very concentric seal,...that being the finished product LOOKING as though it has been relined. I had two characters heatedly arguing about one of my rifles parked in a rack at a range, some years back,....one swearing up and down it was a re-line, the other yelling back that I'd just told him the week before that I only did .22 liners ( and at the time that was all I DID do).
That all-thread an O-ring set up is used here for rust bluing, as well.
Man, you do NOT want to get THAT crap into your barrel !

GTC

Good info on the bore plugs. Thanx for the pix. I never worried about it in bluing, but I want to start parkerizing and this looks like the way to keep it out of the bores.

I made a sets of bore plugs for when I blue, parkerize and plate. Mine releases pressure in the bore when putting it in hot solution, only down fall that I found is if you don't remove when the barrel is still hot there hard to remove, a vacuum holds them fast. I sold alot of these plugs on ebay.

Bluing at 400F Cause your at 4000'....Strange the Colorado School of trades blues at 270F and they are over 5000'.

400 would ruin any receiver or barrel by quickly turning it red.

You must be mistaken. Bore plugs are dangerous and a waste of time. Bluing does not effect accuracy. Been there done that.

Lefty C

I agree that it doesn't effect accuracy but I plug anyways. My bore plugs can't blow out

probably am, re: temps......perhaps it was 300°,...know it was a round #

You are mistaken about bore plugs being "dangerous".

GTC

I have a factory long chambered 260 Rem 10"twist #3 taper from Douglas. It is factory blued inside and out.

That is the fasted Copper fouling barrel I own.