Cold Bluing: Restoring “Family Heirlooms” on the Cheap

The restoration of a collectible firearm can be very expensive, and in most cases should not even be attempted. But what about the thousands’perhaps millions" of "family heirlooms’ in attics and closets around the country? The guns I’m referring to have little real value to a collector, but hold lots of sentimental value for the members of a family.

More often than not, the "heirloom" we’re talking about is grandpa’s old "squirrel gun" that was put away years ago and has been recently rediscovered by his son who now wants to pass it along to the grandson. The question then becomes: How much is a family willing to spend to restore an "heirloom" that probably cost less than $30 when grandpa ordered it from the Sears catalog or picked it up in the local Western Auto store back in the 50s? The answer to that question is usually: Not very much.

Probably not enough, in fact, to cover a complete stock refinish and recheckering job, not to mention the price of a hotbluing job. So what do we do? Do we send the customer packing with a "sorry I can’t help you"? Or are there some reasonable alternatives to the high costs of restoration? As it happens, I’ve done quite a few of these low-budget "facelift" jobs since I opened my shop several years ago, and I’ve been able to fill that niche between saying "sorry" and the high cost of gunmetal and stock refinishing.

A good example of what can be done "on the cheap" is the beatenup Savage .250-3000 Super Sporter pictured here. My older brother had gotten it from another commercial fisherman as repayment for money owed from sometime in the distant past. Superficially, the rifle was a mess. It functioned fine and my brother had used it for a few deer seasons, but most of its life had been spent on a commercial salmon trawler in the damp and salty climate of the Pacific Ocean.

The checkering was worn flat where it had rocked in the boat’s rack. It was pitted and rusty, the finish completely gone. My brother knew it was somewhat rare, but with little collector appeal, and even in its present condition it had emotional value that he wanted passed along to a deserving descendant. It needed both wood and metal work before it could be passed along.

From the time I opened my shop, I couldn’t justify the cost of hot-bluing equipment, and while slow-rust bluing is beautiful and relatively inexpensive in terms of equipment, it’s a very labor-intensive process. That led me to do some research on cold-bluing options, some of which offer a reasonably priced alternative to the more expensive processes. Lately I’ve been using an eco- 22caliber Savage 1899 takedown rifle was found by his son in the attic.

All of the bluing is gone, but it has a good bore and, after some minor adjustments, it shoots fine. The discolored area on the buttstock is a greenish mold.

friendly three-phase product called Blue Wonder, manu letely disassembling it, except for removing the barrel from the receiver, which is not necessary with this process. I then cleaned all metal and "de-blued" it in an overnight bath of Brownells’ Steel White diluted 10:1. This is a nontoxic p H-neutral solution made with hot tap water, although I recommend wearing gloves anyway.

The instructions say to use a 5:1 dilution, but reasoning that I’m dealing with old steel, I’ve found that 10:1 works fine and makes the bottle last twice as long. As with any metal-finishing process, the surface preparation determines the final look, so the intensive part is the long and uneventful polishing and buffing. After that, however, the simplicity of the Blue Wonder process becomes evident.

First, you wipe the cleaner on the metal and heat the surface with a torch or hair dryer until it’s hot to the touch, making sure not to bubble or burn the cleaner. Then you wipe the cleaner off and dab on the bluing. Now the surface color is blotchy, uneven, and flat, and you’ll be wondering "what have I done?" (I guess that’s why they call it Blue Wonder.) But never fear. After the bluing solution dries for a few moments, you wipe on the developer, and almost immediately a golden hue is evident.

To get a darker finish, you just keep repeating the "clean, dab, and develop" steps until it’s dark enough. It doesn’t look exactly like hot bluing or slow rust, but considering how quick and easy it is, it looks quite good. Shortly after Novum Solutions introduced their Blue Wonder Gun Blue kit, they came up with a Gun Black kit, which I like even more than the original bluing. As with most things, the more you practice with it, the better the surface finish will be.

In time, you’ll figure out those little technical tidbits that the package instructions can never get across to you. For example, if the surface is a bit too hot, the bluing solution dries too quickly; and if it’s not hot enough, the "pores" in the metal don’t get opened enough. On larger-sized pieces, it takes longer to apply, so you have to keep the surfaces at the right temperature (ideally 110 degrees F.) while allowing a few seconds of penetration time for each dab.

Microscopic particles are actually binding themselves to the metal structure, which is why the manufacturer stresses that you keep shaking the bottle even while doing all of this other stuff. Yes, it does take some doing to get it right. But, relax, if something doesn’t work out quite right, it only takes a few minutes to start all over again. That is, of course, unless you discover that your polishing job sucks, in which case the redo will take a little longer.

Now that I’ve gotten the hang of using the Blue Wonder products, I can show a customer an assortment of barrels and most won’t be able to say which ones are factory blued and which are cold blued. On the Savage, the wood looked just as miserable as the metal, but Brownells" Checkering Restoration Kit helped to solve the problem of the worn checkering (see "Recutting and Restoring Worn or Damaged Stock Checkering’ in the March 08 issue). Then I used Blue Wonder’s Wood Shine to bring back the luster.

It’s not the equivalent of a hand-rubbed finish on new wood, but it’s pretty darn close for a fraction of the cost. Conclusions As a skilled craftsman offering your services to the public, you need to advise your customers against doing anything that would compromise the value of a collectible gun. By the same token, you need to be up to date on what products and services are within your area of expertise and what alternatives are available that your customers can afford.

Today’s cold bluing products are leagues ahead of what they were only a decade ago, and most of the "found" family guns are simply not collectible. In most cases, the "restoration job" is all about making the gun look nice for the grandkid. I’ll give a customer a price on a hot-bluing job, and while they’re dealing with the sticker shock, I’ll pull out a few of my cold blued guns (which, by now, have set long enough for the chemical smell to dissipate).

And then, when I quote them a price on cold bluing, with wide eyes and smiles, my offer is usually accepted. I