rebluing a gun, I have a few questions....

[CareyH]

A good friend of mine brought over a 1911 that had been left in a crawl space for about 2 years and guess what...... its rusted up pretty good. Its nothing high end just a Springfield 1911-A1. I stripped it down to the frame and soaked it in coke, scrubbed it pretty good and then ran it through my ultra sonic. The frame and slide will definitely need to be reblued. I watched some videos on you tube and there seems to be a lot of different ways to blue a gun. Hot bluing, cold blueing, slow rust bluing.... In your experiences which provides the best finish?

Also, to remove the old finish should I just go to home depot and buy a gallon of rust remover and soak the parts or go buy the small bottle at the gun store and brush it on?

Any other tips and tricks would be appreciated. Thanks

Carey

[earplug]

The finish is dependent on the polish. Cold blue is only good for touch ups, Hot dip is the industry standard, Rust blue works well on shotgun tubes that are soldered together. its the better of the three blues for holding a coat of oil and preventing rust. If you want something you can leave in a crawl space without rusting, i'd look at electroless nickle plating or a ceramic coating. then duracoat.

[BPTactical]

Parkerizing is cheap, durable and corrosion resistant.
Prep work is easy, a good media blast does it which is important if the item you are dealing with shows minor rust pits.

[def90]

I second parkerizing.. plus it's a historically correct finish for a 1911. If you are only finishing one gun then taking it to someone to have it done will be quicker/easier/cheapest. If you have more parts to do you can have the parts media blasted and then parkerize them on your stove if you want.

Getting ready to parkerize a FAL..

[MarkCO]

Just make sure it is quality steel if you go for salt bath. I took a pistol to a "gunsmith" who turned it into a nice hunk of swiss cheese. Yeah he should have checked, but I should have also.

[CareyH]

Thanks for all the input!

[ray1970]

Sounds like a good candidate for a cool cerakote job. Maybe something two tone or tan or something.

[hurley842002]

I'll third parkerizing, it's likely what the Springfield came with anyway.

[wctriumph]

I did a cold blue job using that kit in the blue bottles I got from MidwayUSA. These are Remington model 552's that I bought at a pawn shop and they were in pretty tough shape. I took them apart and cleaned everything really good and followed the instructions. It took about 1 hour per gun to reblue the barrel and magazine tube and some of the smaller parts. the receivers were stripped of their finish and then spray painted black with the gun coat stuff from Brownells (it is really expensive stuff). Then I stripped the furniture and refinished with a good Urethane. they came out nice. Sorry I don't have the before pic's. The cold blue worked very well and came out perfect. Just follow the instructions in the kit.