Young Man Afraid Of His Horses

[Sharps40]

Thanks. Hopefully pick up both SAA Hammerli's today. One day, I'm gonna make me a Blackhawk Carbine though. 357/44 BD sounds to be the right caliber for it.

 

[walkerinatl]

Sub's so I don't forget to see the final outcome.

 

[Sharps40]

Small parts are done including the heads and tails of the screws. I hate rust bluing screw heads. But, they's done. Now to mull on it and decide if the main body and barrel will be black or brown.

 

[Quacker]

That's awesome man! I'd love to see a detailed thread on your bluing process. Sounds very interesting!

 

[Sharps40]

I think I've pretty well detailed it in a bunch of my threads. Not hard. Rust bluing is prep, clean, slather on pilkingtons, wait, boil, card, repeat.

Browning is much the same but I use Laurel Mountain, and exchanges a hot water rinse for boiling and carding with rough terry instead of steel wool.

The hardest part of rust bluing and browning is developing and maintaining a schedule for several days. I usually combine work so that as one job is done, its time to attend to the parts being blackened and then back to another job until its time again.

 

[Sharps40]

Go rust Young Man.

We'll be back when its done. Many 12 hour waits with boiling and carding and rusting again. Maybe done by this week or weekend and ready for final assembly.

Swirrlygigged for blue removal and to hide some of the pitting...

3 minutes into the rusting process....

 

[Sharps40]

Good red rust turns black when you boil it....ions and all that. Then all but the strongest black oxide cards off under the steel wool.

Good rust right after the boil. It'll card up nicely.

 

[Sharps40]

430 AM wake up. And, its hard to be unhappy with this level of rust.

 

[Sharps40]

Heat, water and ion exchange.....brown to black.

Ready for carding off the fluff

Second rust looks fantastic, sauce it up with pilkingtons and back in the damp box till 5 PM.

 

[Sharps40]

A quick look. Finishing up a brass pinch nut for the ejector rod housing and need to shorten the brass grip screw a touch. The black got as black as it could in 4 passes, just wouldn't rust more, especially the barrel, so rather than keep building and knocking off the same for no additional color, I stopped the rust and went to oil and assembly. Still fiddling with the grips. If I were to do anything different with this project, it'd be to put on wood grips. I'd loose some of the theme but the urethane is so funky to work with and soft. It was a compromise getting this pattern grip to fit what with moving the grip screw hole as much as I could but not outside the hub of the wheel....etc. We'll see how it holds up. The grips kind of tell me a story with their carving but also irritate me with their fit and finish. Both adding and detracting from the project.

More pics later with some better light and after final tweaking of brass, etc. (9mm cylinder is already fitted and ready....its not rust blued though as the original ruger blue was just perfect and not purple, so I left it as is.)