Well, if you use MolyResin, you can do it yourself much easier than trying to hot blue it yourself.

I just bought the Angier book on blueing and I may give it a shot... but from my research it looks like its going to be expensive and a pain even with fashioning a lot of my own things.  Its more authentic and will probably look cooler when it wears, but I'm starting to consider something like moly resin just because its so much easier and more practical for a home build.  If you send it away and have it blued you are looking at around $150 :(

I like the way blue looks mainly because I'm not used to anything else.  BUT - the new coatings/paints are far superior to blue, which was really obsolete by WWII.

I've never tried it but heres a home bluing recipe with info........ Here

I have done bluing before.  We made our tanks, burners and stand.  If I had a choice I would prblably moly or gunkoat a AK.  If I was doing another custom mauser, I would blue.  The true beuty of blue is in the apperance, not in the durability.  There is nothing prettier than a high gloss super dark blue on a nice rifle.   The system we used was

1. degrease and strip all parts of blue.

2. Boil in Brownells caustic cleaner (stuff is nasty) 15-20 minutes

3. cook in clean water tank, tank must not have any oil or gick in it. (15-20 minutes)

4.   Hang in hot blue tank.  This has to be done at a certain temperature so regulating that can be a chore.  Gets to hot, you get these crazy red spots, too cold and the blue wont stick.  Keep in mind this stuff is like battery acid on steroids!  Get this stuff on your skin and say goodbye to that piece of skin.  We use a wooden stirring stick and by the end of the day the stick was soft like a bannana.

5. After blue dip, drop it in blue kiddie pool of clean water and "card" off all the blue goo, scrub bore, find all the spots that look like crap and try agin....lol...

^.  When we were all done, the rifles looked great, I did a SRM in 7x57 with a douglas blank and a rollover stock and a Martini in 45-70 (shilen blank).  Mauser turned out great, Martini lookes good but still need someone that can work with wood.


We did 4 rifles and it took 7 hours.  

Instead of writing it all over again....Check this out
I did it.....You can too

http://www.ak47.net/forums/topic.html?b=4&f=51&t=82888

Moly is.....more Rust resitant ......easy to do....AND DOES NOT eat your skin ....
nor as lethal....
Check out the Norrells molys and see the one that will look like oiled blueing.....

Amen on the skin eating.  Takes all the fun out of bluing.  The stuff is crazy, if you get a droplet of water in your salts the stuff volcanoes into the air.  Ended up on my smithys head, he then dove into the 5 gal buck of water we had just for that purpose.   he then stopped making fun of my stupid looking leather hat.  lol.



OMP