Artificailly aging metal

[B. Dudley]

Wondering if anyone out there has a good way of artificially aging metal. Say if there is a spot on a receiver that needs to be polished out and after you want to gray it back to try and match the rest of the patina on the gun.

I know when I took jewelry class in college, we used to use a pickeling solution to darken metals.

[Parkerman]

I would guess that the pickeling solution is acidic thereby providing oxidation to the metal on which it has been applied. Guessing again that spot treatment on steel that had been case hardened might be variable dependent upon one "spot" vs another and thus difficult to match given the history of the metal

[John Hancock]

Brian, Take some scrap steel, polish and put a slice of apple on it for an hour at a time. I am not kidding. As well, any hydorchloric acid will do it, ie: toilet cleaner, concrete etchant, ect. Dupont makes a steel refinishing system (part # 5718-s) that I have played around with on a (Junk, been a house fire) Superposed action, you need to dip in this and I don't know if you could do just a spot like you described, with this stuff the longer you leave it the darker the gray will get. Experiment till you get the steel to turn the color you want. If you did decide to do the whole action I can give you some more of my experience from what I have done so far. Regards, John H

[John Hancock]

Per Parkerman's thoughts, I have not tried to do any graying on something case hardened and I too expect that the "skin" will make it hard to get any kind of a match. We can always borrow money, can't borrow time and there isn't ever enough of it. Regards, John H

[B. Dudley]

I will have to play around a bit when I get the chance. I know that the pickling solution that we used on jewelry metals was very fast acting. Turned the metal black nearly instant. I have had fair luck in the past touching up scratches in case colors with just a quick application of cold blue. However, if you have an action with Patina and there are white scratches or marks, something more mild would be needed.

[MarketHunter]

I'd try the apple trick. I've used it on vintage knives after I cleaned them up and it really works. Take a vintage knife you've had to file on or buff a bit to clean up, then cut up an apple with it. Leave the juice on the blade and let it dry for a couple hours. It will be blue / grey again in no time. A quick rinse in cold water will clean it off and you'll be set.

DLH

[J. A. EARLY]

Brian,

I had an excellent Remington VH that had lots of case colors. However, one of the breech balls on the receiver had a severe case of road rash where it appeared to me it had met pavement . I had Thierry Duquet put all of the metal back in place he could, and the reshape it and recut the zig-zag border. Now I had a perfect receiver with one shiny spot. I used a pencil butane torch, heated it only slightly at the bare spot, applied a little bluing with a cotton swab, and used a very fine Scotchbrite pad to slowly match the rest. One could not tell it had ever been touched and still cannot until this day. If the receiver was a brown patina instead of gray I would use browning on it as that instantly turns brown and can be worked down with a Scotchbrite pad. The worst you can do is get back to square one where you started.

[Chuck Heald]

I have used acids (Muriatic) used for concrete cleaning on metals, but not for aging. In the commercial strengths, it will brighten metal to silver instantly.

[Chuck Heald]

I often wondered if getting that gray patina could be achieved by using rust blue solution (nitric acid solution) in a similar manner to rust blueing: apply solution, rust for a period, flush with water, and scouwer with 000 or thereabouts steelwool, repeat as necessary. The acid would etch as it does in the finish of rust blue. Comments?

[B. Dudley]

Destry,

How would I go about cutting an apple with a shotgun action?