Yup, that is a No.7 transit box, works like a charm and long enough to do Martini rifle actions, as seen in the pic.
I bought an old 1936 printing of a book by R.H.Angier off of FleaBay. In this book he describes the rust blueing process (or 'browning' to be correct) going back to early days of firearms and armour. He includes dozens of chemical formulae and recipes for cleaning baths and blueing solutions.
One of the very first processes that he tried and describes was using regular salt. Made sense to me as I see what road salt does to car bodywork. So I tried a saturated solution of table salt and got the old barrel in the box rusting within minutes! I let the thing go red, when good I shut the lid and cooked it for half an hour. I took it out and scratched with fine steel wool. Slapped on more salt solution and put it back in the box. Did it again a few times until dark enough, took about six or seven times. Very dense and tough black.
I bought an old 1936 printing of a book by R.H.Angier off of FleaBay. In this book he describes the rust blueing process (or 'browning' to be correct) going back to early days of firearms and armour. He includes dozens of chemical formulae and recipes for cleaning baths and blueing solutions.
One of the very first processes that he tried and describes was using regular salt. Made sense to me as I see what road salt does to car bodywork. So I tried a saturated solution of table salt and got the old barrel in the box rusting within minutes! I let the thing go red, when good I shut the lid and cooked it for half an hour. I took it out and scratched with fine steel wool. Slapped on more salt solution and put it back in the box. Did it again a few times until dark enough, took about six or seven times. Very dense and tough black.
