Both easy and effective method of any application is tough to find. But regarding cleaning the gun parts, you can apply cold blue. But the first thing is that you must know how to cold blue a gun.
Let’s see that in this article I have brought up the steps considering the basic area.
What is ‘Bluing’:
Bluing is nothing but changing the chemical composition of the outside of your gun. Why do you need to do it? Simply to say, to prevent rust. Or in other words, to prevent the glare to affect your eyes when shooting. To do bluing, iron needs to be altered into steel to form a coating of magnetite.
There are several processes to do this. What are those? Check out here –
- Hot bluing
- Cold Bluing
- Rust Bluing
- Fume bluing
- Carbona bluing
But by following our title, we will go for how to cold blue a pistol/gun.
Why Cold Bluing? – Easy or Inexpensive?
Why we have chosen to explain the cold bluing? Not the others? Is it the best way?
Not like that actually. Cold bluing a gun is the –
- The easiest way to refinish the steel
- Most inexpensive to blue
- And also easy for the noob
But remember one thing; cold blue is not like a stable way to blue. It may not be so stable as the other process. But the other process needs much labor, experience to perform and last of all expensive. The example of money can be around $150, and that obviously you won’t want to spend. So, for normal people like us, we should go for the homemade cold bluing solution.
What you will need?
For professional cold bluing, you will need these items like-
- Sandpaper( 400 – 600 grit)
- Metal finishing pads
- Brake cleaner
- Acetone
- Steel wool
- Cotton balls
- Gun oil– quality is top-notch
If you are searching the best cold bluing kit then here is our suggested gun bluing products for you: Delta provision gun cleaning kit.
Step by step process of how to cold blue a gun
Choose the parts that you want to cold blue. If this is the whole gun parts or spot bluing a gun, then follow the steps properly.
Get rid of the original or old bluing:
At first, you need to do this as a part bluing. That’s so important. Believe me, you will find yourself in a severe problem if you don’t do this before. Your rifle may carry any harmful element. Or can carry various grooves or wear. To set down the problem, you will need to use steel wool, gun oil. You will have to soak the wool perfectly in the oil. Then turn it on the gun to remove any scratch, pits or rust. The reason behind using the wool is that this type won’t take away a lot of metal but still can clear the metal.
After removing the old bluing, let’s focus on the original bluing. If it didn’t remove before, you just need to carry that out. To do this you will need sandpaper. 400 grit sandpaper will work perfectly.
And then you will have to use higher grit sandpaper like 600 grit. And polish then the metal to make that snazzy.
Make the metal-free from degreasing:
After polishing you have to clean the whole metal as it already gets degreased. You have to remove oil, silicon, and grease from the part of the gun. You need to carry the metal-free from the residue using any cleaner like blast type. Make it free from oil or residue as soon as possible.
Then wash the whole part with acetone. Acetone will help you to remove all types of existing synthetic or natural oil. If you find it carefully, you will find good acetone and blaster available in the market. But choose very wisely.
From this step, you have to wear gloves until the last. Because your skin oil also matters!
Apply blue solution:
Now, it is high time to apply the cold bluing solution over the metal. Take a cotton ball and drench it into the solution. Now drag over that ball over the skin of the metal.
Don’t look at the discouraging color turning. Cover the full area of the metal with the solution. But don’t let the solution stock into any particular part. That will leave a spot before drying. So, smoothly drag the solution over the full area.
Rinse with water:
After covering the whole area, you can wait for the maximum one minute. Because if you do late, the black spot will turn over spontaneously. To avoid this rinse the metal with water. Fully drag into a bucket of water. Then keep it in a dry place. You should use a dry and fully lint-free cloth to wipe the water. By this, the solution will fully getaway.
Repeating process:
It’s called the finishing process. You have to again use steel wool and polish the metal again to remove any stain or other things. Then wash with acetone again. This will really upgrade the level of the metal. You will get a shiny look after all. Now let the metal dry fully.
For the better option, you can again use a blue solution again. In most of the cases, people don’t understand that the cold bluing process isn’t a stable process. So, you should do another step with a blue solution. You can follow the previous process fully. Then you should again apply steel wool and acetone.
So, the steps are finished here.
Final words:
You know now how to cold blue a gun. Don’t forget though this application will cost 3 to 4 hours including the drying time, you shouldn’t be done in a hurry. And also after the end, you shouldn’t do any work with the gun. And it will better if you heat at low temperatures somehow. This will help to get the actual color back. So, follow the steps carefully and best of luck. You can also read our shotgun recoil pad guide to choose your best shotgun recoil pad today. Also, maintain essential gun bluing safety measures.
