Authentic blueing on the Enfield

[cjc]

Hi all. I am new to reenacting, and when I get the musket, I would like to take off the blueing on an Enfield, and replace it with a period recipie so it will wear off like the origanals. It is my understanding, that the origanal blueing was very weak and worn off in a short amount of time. Instead of compleatly burnishing the enfield, I would like to let it wear like it would of back then. I have done some searches, but I couldent find anthing on making an origanal finish. Does anybody have a recipie for it? If it contains toxic chemicals (like the waterproofing agent) are there any substitutes that would wear off similarly?
thank you

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: Authentic blueing on the Enfield

Hallo!

Sometimes using the SEARCH function is a matter of playing with the right word or word combinations when looking.

This topic has been covered moderaerly well several times in the past. For example run a SEARCH for "rust bluing."

The Hobby Myth about Enfield bluing being weak, is just that, a myth that rose out of reenacting when lads started so-called "de-farb" work and used cheap ineffective cold blue liquids and pastes to try to replicate rust-blued barrels.

Original Enfields left the factories with a rust-blued (blackened) barrel and heat blued barrel bands.

An "expedient" or modern simulated "short cut" some lads use is to use vinegar and 0000 steel wool on the modern Italian repro "hot tank" wet black ink looking bluing.
Vinegar is weak acetic acid, and it will start to dull and even remove the black "bluing." HOWEVER, because viengar can vary in strength, AND because the hot tank blue can be uneven, AND because lads may apply the vinegar with random vigor and steel wool abrasion... it is a tricky process to master. Often, lads end up with overly thin streaks or near bare metal areas where things have gone wrong and botched the whole look.

Rust-bluing is a fairly simply process using commercially available weak acid solutions to accelerate oxidation (rusting) or "browning," and then boiling or scalding water baths/rinses to change the molecular structure of the oxide from a realtivelt deep and thick brown to a thick and durable black.

Curt

[Silas]

Re: Authentic blueing on the Enfield

Using the search terms, "how to blue an enfield," revealed this thread : http://www.authentic-campaigner.com/...t=blue+enfield which lead to this article : http://authentic-campaigner.com/arti...es/enfauth.htm

There are many more threads like this on the forum. Took me all of five minutes to perform a search and view some of the links before I got into relevant discussions. There are more out there. This thread is just one of the more recent threads. I stopped at this because it's in the ballpark and because I didn't want to perform all your own research for you.

Be patient when looking as you never know what other interesting things you'll encounter while looking for something else.

[fahnenschmied]

Re: Authentic blueing on the Enfield

Alrighty - what the other said - the original finish did NOT wear off easily. Second, the finish that is on a new Enfield musket barrel is going to look very much like the finish that was on a new Enfield barrel back in the 1860s. Third, even if you took that barrel back to a Birmingham maker in the 1860s and snuck it into the line of barrels to be blued - it will not necessarily look the same. Most of the old barrrels were iron. The new ones are steel. They don't rust the same. Rust blue is VERY durable. If you wish to reblue any part of your Enfield, you should do the barrel bands. An Armi-sport comes with the bands which are casehardened. These should be heat blued. You can polish them and dunk them in molten stump remover a few seconds to niter blue them, easy enough to do but you need to practice it and be aware of what you are doing, and read about it on a few metalworking forums before you try that. You could set your house on fire doing it.
Remember these were new back then. You had to look after it. Would you buy a new car, then grind most of the tread off the tyres, fade and wear the paint off the roof and dust the windshield with a sand blaster to give it those fine pits like the windshield of my ten year old vehicle? Probably not. Just use it!