Sorry if this is in the wrong section.

I've been working on a Lyman Great Plains Rifle kit for the past few months now.  So far, things seem to go just fine for the first 2-3 boils, but anything after that, things go horribly, horribly wrong.  In the following photos, I have parts that came out of their boil more red than when they went in.  The top photo (tang) and the bottom (ramrod holder) along with another part were in the same boil.  The ramrod holder came out just fine, as did the barrel and toe plate before that.  Everything else either came out like the tang, or with a bit less of the red.





I started with Pilkington's and then switched to Laurel Mountain Forge which is what I used for this session.  I boil in distilled water and all parts are carded with a stainless wire brush (from Brownell's) or 0000 degreased steel wool and wiped down with acetone to ensure the surfaces are oil and contaminant free.  I do the same thing every time and cannot figure out where things are going wrong.  Parts in the same boil come out with different results.

At this point, I have sunk way too much time and money into this project and I am utterly at wits end with it.  I will be looking into purchasing already blued parts so I can just finish this thing and will likely never try this again, but I would like to know if anyone has any idea what keeps going wrong.  Every other part failed today and some of them have been stripped down and re-done up to 5 times, never getting past 3-4 boils.

Any advice or help would be appreciated.

I can't say that I think it's the container.  All parts that went well were boiled in the same water in the same tank as the parts that went poorly.  When the first couple parts went wrong, I stopped and got a different container with new water with the same results.  My best guess is that something is happening in the application process, or while the parts are rusting.  This too is a mystery as I do the same things for each part.  What you see in the photos has happened to me twice before.

I'm hesitant to oil the parts.  I ruined the barrel by oiling it when I had to stop the process for an extended period of time to take care of some minor rust in the bore.  Even after giving it a surgical scrub with acetone to clean it, it came out a mess.

I see most of these rifles blued.  Is browning really more traditional for this type?  There is one last thing I might try and if that doesn't work, I may have to brown it.  Perhaps that will be leaps and bounds simpler to do.

What are the inside surface of the container covered in?

Ceramic type material are best.
Any metal only container can cause a whole lot of strange things.

Rust bluing requires a fine coat of rust before the bluing compound is applied.

It then 'converts' the rust to a blued coating.

Could you brown it? I don’t know if the process is easier or harder.....

Browned looks great though

I'm using a steel tank from Brownell's.  It's not the stainless one because I was already way over budget with this project (though now I should have bought once and cried once).  Every source I read says that you really only need a stainless tank if you're going to parkerize.  Though, I have used a stainless steel cooking pot for small parts and get the same anomaly.  I make sure to clean the tank with soapy distilled water before each use and then rince with more distilled water.  I've done several successful boils in that tank, including the night things went wrong.  Oddly enough, the barrel is looking good after only 2 boils.

I have tried steaming, but the parts streak.

As for the question about browning; yes, it would be easier in that all you need to do us rust the part several times until the desired color is achieved.  I'm just boiling between each session to turn the rust black.

I'm not sure what you mean here.  I'm doing a slow rust blue so I apply the solution to the steel, let it rust, boil it to turn it black, then card it.  Wash rince repeat until desired color is achieved, or in my case; have everything go wrong in the 3rd round.

Have you tried carding it anyway?

I’ve used Laurel Mountain quite a bit, it’s been a while , but it seems like when I ran into this, it was still converting on the metals surface but the “flowered “ rust did not. Carding revealed black under the rust.

I found Laurel Mountain very forgiving and easy to use.

I did all my boils in a stainless grease trap, and a drywall mud pan for small stuff.

When I started I used gallons of distilled water, now I just use well water from the tap, and often do multiple boils before changing water, still get great results with Laurel Mountain.

Some of my rust blues with Laurel Mountain

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Done a lot more, don’t have access to the photos right now. You can see my struggles learning in my Mauser thread on page 3 of this thread.

ETA: Different steels react differently, softer steel is much easier to get the rust on, harder steels take longer, don’t darken as well, require mor rusts.

PR361:  I did card a couple parts and the orange does seem to come off.  I've done an experiment before the last time I got these results and reapplied the solution to the parts, but ended up with the same red rust problem after the boil.  I'll try again since I don't really have anything to lose at this point.

I am going through an ungodly ammount of distilled water, but I do multiple runs in the same boil which does not seem to be an issue.  How do you use well water?  The directions on the LMF bottle say that any minerals in the water will keep the parts in the red ferric state.

The biggest issue is that I simply cannot figure out what is causing these problems.  It seems entirely random, I cannot point to any one thing in my process that is causing the issue.

Side question:  I card as much as possible without wearing off the finish, but then I give them a thorough cleaning with acetone until my paper towers come off clean.  Is this necessary?

I quit being fussy about a lot of things; I don’t bother degreasing the steel wool, don’t use any solvents to clean between boils.

keeping it oil free is important, I use nitril gloves handling the part. Seems odd, but I never have any issues from the steel wool , Laurel Mountain states ie is an oil remover, so there’s that.

How heavy are you putting on the solution?

less is more in this case. I boil the part, pull it out of the boiling water, usually it’s hot enough to self dry without a wipe down.

Card it, wipe it down with paper towels and re-coat with solution while it’s still warm and the solution dries on the part. A nice , clean, one wipe application without rubbing back and forth.

Might be the aecetone messing you up, I never use it.

I had issues with a part I had oiled.  I gave the thing a complete scrub with acetone and then applied the solution and still got very bad results, resulting in a need to strip the part.  I know people say that LMF is a good degreaser, but I think that may only be fore small bits of oil instead of parts that had been completely wiped down with it.

I squeeze out as much of the solution as possible from the cotton patch I use to apply it.  I'll dab it on a clean paper towel to be sure it isn't too wet.  I'll admit that on broad parts, it's hard to get a smooth, streak free wipe, so I have sometimes given another quick wipe fill in a streak before the solution dries.  I use a heat gun to warm the parts to the point where the solution dries fairly quickly, but does not "vaporize".  Though, I think I have overheated parts before and the solution has dried as quickly as I could put it down.

I'll give the acetone free treatment a try.

As you recommended, I took some steel wool and carded off the parts.  All the red rust on the parts is gone as if it never bit into the part at all, so now they are just the gray they were before I applied the solution.  I've redone parts like this before and they eventually failed, but I'll give it a go again and see what happens.

Thank you so much for your responses, and I know this post is already long, but I have another question; after the first two "rustings" or sometimes even after the first it doesn't seem like the parts take to rusting anywhere near as well as when they were in the white.  This makes some sense naturally, but I would have expected a more gradual effect than what I'm getting.

A couple of things, gray color: sometimes, if the part rusts too much, the rust etches the part. this makes a rough surface, it reflects the light differently, and shades grayer too the eye, it also doesn’t want to rust more and won’t get darker.

Card it well, then look with a good magnifying glass. If it is pitted or etched, it’s not going to improve, you just have to suck it up and get the sandpaper out, bare metal,sand away the pitting,polish back to the shine you want, 320,400,  600, start over.

Rusting is like a dot matrix printer, each rust fills in more spots , making it darker, until ever bit of the surface is rusted , which will be black, and it will stop rusting.
Don’t get too worked up about streaking, if you keep repeating the rusts , it will “fill in”, and eventually darken everything equally.

Sorry, but I'm a bit confused by this.  Most sources say that it can take up to several boilings before the parts turn black and might be more gray for a time.  Obviously you've done this successfully several times, so I'm not doubting you.  I'm just curious.  Are these gray parts really done rusting?

How long do you let them rust before it starts to etch the metal?  I only ever let the parts rust just long enough to get a good orange coating.  The air is getting dry here, so it takes much longer than when I started with high heat and humidity, so I have let parts sit for a 2-3 days before I got any decent rusting.  I "built" a sweat box some time back, so I have started using that again.

As long as the part keeps putting on rust, it should continue to get darker. If it won’t take rust, but looks gray, it may be pitted or etched. This is if you let it rust to long between boils, and the rust bites to deeply into the surface. It may not be readily apparent to the eye, but will appear a lighter color, and under glass, pitting will be visible.
Sometimes it’s just the steel, high nickel content or something.

I like to put smaller parts in a closed container with a wet rag and shine a lamp on them to create a warm, wet environment to speed the process along.

You have to stay on top of it though.

It takes a little trial error to get a good feel for it, but I think rust blueing is the best way for most home builders/ smiths to make a good, durable blued finish.