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Might not be able to clearly see the difference, but I applied some Van's to a few really worn areas of my DS.

It's been a carry piece, so I'm not really concerned about whether it worked right or not. Talked to COLT again today, but I'm still undecided about spending over $300 to have it re-blued.

Here's a before pic. Notice the wear on the edge of the barrel and strange spots on the cylinder:


After Van's



I give the product high marks, but as you all know, ain't nuthin' "cold" gonna replace old school Colt bluing.

For over $300, maybe you should try some gold accents.
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They're proud of their blue jobs, ain't they?

And that's not ever for the Royal Blue treatment.

doc, I can see the difference, and IMO it looks great!

If you ask me, DO NOT spend $300 for a reblue job from Colt. Spend it on something nice for yourself, like another gun, or ammo even.

Good job!

joe817 wrote:doc, I can see the difference, and IMO it looks great!

If you ask me, DO NOT spend $300 for a reblue job from Colt. Spend it on something nice for yourself, like another gun, or ammo even.

Good job!

Thanks.

Ya know, it's one of them thangs in the back of my mind. It shoots so darned good, I might just keep it till I pass, and in the meantime, admire it with a classic Colt blue finish.

gnome sayin'?

You can buy enough of the chemical from Midway and others to do 50 pistols for less than $50. Add ten bucks for a couple of pyrex baking pans from the nearest Wallyworld and you can do a really professional bluing job on your kitchen range. Use the other $250 for ammo and head for the range.

Can you guarantee me it'll look like this?

doc540 wrote:Can you guarantee me it'll look like this?

No, Doc.
It will still have that big round thing in the middle.

Doc,

The best and toughest cold blue I've ever used is Brownell's Oxpho-Blue. I have reblued a couple of guns with it and it holds up quite well. There are some good reports about Blue Wonder gun blue I haven't tried it yet.

Metal prep is the secret to a good high gloss blue job.

MoJo wrote:Metal prep is the secret to a good high gloss blue job.

This is true for any type of surface finish. I haven't seen any new model Colts, but I wonder if they can even duplicate their Royal Blue finish of yesteryear. With more and more EPA restrictions on chemical useage and disposal I wonder if Colt can even use the same composition baths that they did 30-40 years ago.

MoJo wrote:Doc,
Metal prep is the secret to a good high gloss blue job.

What's involved?

The Annoyed Man asked: "What's involved?"

The simple answer is: lots of elbow grease!

Essentially the blueing process simply adds a special oxide layer to the steel gun parts that makes them look blue; nothing more, nothing less. If you don't remove all the oil and grease then the water based solution won't work on that part of the steel that has an oily film and it won't look blue. So it must be cleaned to the point that there is absolutely no oil anywhere. Given that, the steel will when it comes out of the blueing process look just like it did when it went in except it will be blue. If it was scruffy and rust pitted going in then that will not change.

If you want a matt finished parkerized military pistol to look like a gleaming commercial Colt just out of the box then you have a load of metal work to do. This work can be done by taking wet/dry abrasive (sand) paper wrapping it around a wood block and carefully grinding away all the parkerizing and polishing the metal with progressively finer grades of paper until it has a mirror finish before blueing it. This will produce a twin of the $300.00 Colt finish; one that can be called "factory original". All the edges will be sharp, the proof marks will be sharp and clear and the rust pits and any roughness to the surfaces will be removed. The flat surfaces will be flat and the rounded areas will have the correct radius.

The quick and dirty way is to get a bench grinder with a wire brush on one end and a cloth polishing wheel on the other and get after the gun parts with vigor and determination. What you'll end up with is a gun that is gleaming blue but all the edges will be rounded off, the proof marks will be smeared across the metal as will all the rust pits and tooling marks on every surface. This kind of work is what comes out of the average gunsmith's shop for $150 or so. From a distance it looks ok but up close it will look like a half eaten all-day sucker. No mistaking that for "factory original"