Some more work went in last night! I got my final prep done to all my metal with my vinegar bath- including my entire receiver/barrel, which did not go as planned. I didn't have a vessel large enough to soak the whole thing, so I attempted to make one out of two wallpaper trays. As it turns out, hot glue is not ideal to put the two together AND have them be waterproof, but I made it work with some towels and a girlfriend who is unhappy with our basement now smelling like vinegar.
After that, I did a degrease on everything with mineral spirits and got to blueing. Let's reflect back to my first post where I mentioned I had no idea what I was doing- last night proved that. The blueing went about as well as I expected; I now have a 5 foot gun. That is to say that from 5 feet away it looks great, but up close you can see some issues. I was using Birchwood Casey Super Blue and one of those sponge brush things and I just wasn't doing something right. I had a tough time getting the blueing to "take" in some spots, but in others it took really well. There were small spots that I missed on my multiple degreasing runs, and it showed, because blueing just beaded off it and mucked things up. Looking back, I don't think the sponge brush was the right applicator either. For the most part, everything turned out well-ish, but I am not happy with the color. I used super blue because I wanted everything to be black by the time I was done, or as close to it as I could get. At this point everything is at more of a steel grey color, and that's not what I want.
My Birchwood Casey Kit comes in a few days; i'm going to strip the blueing off with the product in the kit and start over. The degreaser that comes with it will foam up like dishsoap if you use a sponge, so i'm going to lather the hell out of everything to ensure my degreasing is more effective, and I'm hoping the applicator they send will work better. The kit comes with perma blue, which is just a weaker version of super blue, but my trust in super blue is shaken after last night. It almost seemed like the stuff I was using would turn watery after a few swipes and lose its effectiveness.
The barrel and receiver must be far better looking before i'll be satisfied with this enough to say that the project is complete. The issues don't show up in pictures well, but let's just say there are a couple streaky/blotchy spots that bother me, so it's back to the drawing board.
Here's my leaky vinegar bath tank
Finished product after blueing
