[Guest]

I'm helping a friend with granpa's old gun. It's a Henry Arms Co double barrel. It was heavily surface rusted. I was wondering about the correct colors. Were the plates on the rear stock, one top and bottom one on each side, in the white along with the exposed hammers? There is a small portion of the barrel under the hand guard that appears to be brown almost painted with yellow lines of different sizes that are on a diagonal. It's hard to tell if the barrel was brown or this is rust. If it is brown has anyone used some of the cold chemicals to help make it brown again? i've used Oxpho blue with good results. I've never run into brown before. Any help would be appreciated. They don't want to shoot this gun, only use it as a wall hanger. I want it to look as good as possilbe. Thanks.

 

[JimfromTrafalgar]

Zomby,
I don't know about the yellow lines,but it sounds as though the gun may have damascus barrels. I'm assuming that you've already taken the light rust off. Do you see a subtle swirl to the metal when the light hits at different angles? If so,it's damascus and should be browned. Brownell's sells a product by Laurel Mountain that will do this well.Once the old rust is completely removed.Polish the barrels as well as you can. Remove all traces of oil [they sell several products for this as well]. From this point on, don't touch the barrels with your bare fingers.Apply the rusting agent ,lightly and evenly, using a cotton ball in a clothspin. Allow them to rust,probably overnight will do,then sand using 0000 steel wool.Repete this until the desired level of brown is achieved. This should get the barrels back to near original color and will often bring the damascus pattern back out, at least to some extent.
You may wait and see if you get some other responses. Perhaps better ideas. But this is how I would approach the problem. Should you not like the end result, the process is reversable with a little more elbow grease.
Good Luck,
Jim

 

[Alonzo Tubbs]

Good advice from Jim. If I could add one more step to the process, I'd ask you to degrease the steel wool before use. The barrel steel must be kept almost surgically (sp) clean and could be contaminated by rust inhibiters in the steel wool.

Good luck with a fun project

'Lonzo