Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Any gun boilers!

Just watched an interesting video where Mark Novak boiled a disassembled revolver and a rifle to stop minor rust. He followed up with a carding wheel and or cleaned steel wool, then a soak in kerosene.
Curious if any of you have gone down this rabbit hole with an older firearm that you do not intend to re blue.

I followed Mark's and Cimarron's instructions as close as I could, and got a beautiful job on an 1873 Win. A Winchester collector of some repute looked at it recently, and told me, whatever you do don't try to clean this up....this is a beautiful patina. Not knowing I had already done so.

Bob B257;
Good evening, I hope you all had a good Christmas in your part of New England and you're well.

My late friend who taught me rust bluing would also boil firearms on occasion to stop the rust. It's been at least a decade since I've done one, but going off of memory here's what I recall.

As he explained it to me, the boiling stops the oxidization process.

When we're rust bluing, we'd do successive repetitions of applying the rust causing agent - a combination of acids we got from an old gunsmithing book - then it's boiled for a few minutes in distilled water, then carded with oil free steel wool or a carding wheel as you've noted.

Depending on the metal, after usually 4 or sometimes 5 rust, boil, card/steel wool cycles, the bluing won't get any deeper.

The last boil then was with lye in the water, I can try to remember how much lye for how much water, but the reason was to help stop the oxidization completely.

Then we'd oil it.

I've boiled small parts in a tin to stop them from rusting further since and it worked.

Again it needs to be distilled water otherwise the scale from impurities can play hob with the finish.

Hopefully that made sense and was useful.

All the best and Happy New Year.

Dwayne

I've seen his gun boiling videos. I like them.

I've not tried it because sometimes when I do laundry. Less socks come out than went in. You know what I mean?
:⁠-⁠)

Dwayne and Flint thank you for sharing your experience. Do you have thoughts on a carding wheel? I’ve never owned one. Will likely use a drill motor to power it. Or could set up a pair of bearings and an old washer motor with some pulleys if needed. To this point I’ve only used steel wool and brushes for metal work.
The wheel seems like a useful option?

Brownell's sells carding wheels. They aren't particularly cheap - $70-80. They're nothing more than ultra-fine steel bristles on a wire wheel.

Frankly, I mainly use 0000 steel wool for my rust bluing, the oil-free variety to prevent oil intrusion into the process which must adhere to squeaky clean protocols. You won't find oil-free steel wool at the hardware store, the stuff is oiled to prevent rusting while sitting waiting to be sold. I buy it on line, more expensive than the hardware store variety but still cheaper than a carding wheel. When carding with either method it's highly advisable to wear a face mask to prevent inhaling the airborne particles.

Two kinds of iron oxide (rust): ferrous oxide which is black, and ferric oxide which is red/brown. Ferric oxide needs to be converted to ferrous oxide which is essentially the blue/black we admire on our steel guns, hence the boiling in water. (Don't ask me to explain the molecular chemistry!) The rust bluing process is essentially creating a thin evenly controlled coating of red rust, then converting it to ferrous oxide, then carding it to leave behind a blue/black "stain" on the steel.

The only issue with boiling old rusty gun parts lies in the red rust not having been evenly created under carefully controlled circumstances, with the attendant risk of uneven pitting a likelihood. Still and all I see it as being a beneficial process, way better than having a sorry mess of a gun.

Being a frugal man, some say cheapskate, I just couldn't bring myself to spring for the Brownells, but my local Ace hardware has very fine wire wheels for ten bucks, fine enough you can stick a finger in it at 1800 without pain or injury, and they have a good assortment of wood handle mini wire brushes, brass and steel. They may be located in plumbing dept.

A man told me and my dad when he was in the Army they boiled their M-1s to get the cosmoline off of them. They used the same type heaters to boil the water that were used in field kitchens. He said they used coat hangers to suspend the barreled actions in the water and then hung them up to dry and then wiped them with oil. He said they never rusted.