You gonna use a damp box or heat method?

 

Boil then hang to dry/rust, card, repeat.

Damp box just speeds up the rusting process. I have a fairly damp basement so plan on just hanging it there to rust.

Unfortunately, the author of this thread suffered a severe stroke last year. I've had his thread bookmarked for a while.
https://www.rimfirecentral.com/forums/s ... stcount=22

 

I'd recommend you go to Brownells' site and read all you can about all each form of rust blue. I settled on Mark Lees' Express Blue #2. It does a great job and is very durable. The boil then hang to rust is backwards. the boiling is what changes the rust from red to black. Good luck, it's a lot of fun (and work). There are a few pics of a couple of guns I did in the Ithaca forum under Ohio Mikes' guns. I'd also recommend checking out Mark Lees' website.

 

I'd recommend you go to Brownells' site and read all you can about all each form of rust blue. I settled on Mark Lees' Express Blue #2. It does a great job and is very durable. The boil then hang to rust is backwards. the boiling is what changes the rust from red to black. Good luck, it's a lot of fun (and work). There are a few pics of a couple of guns I did in the Ithaca forum under Ohio Mikes' guns. I'd also recommend checking out Mark Lees' website.

LOL. Correct, rust, then boil, then card. I'd skimmed over AGS's thread looking for that particular post where he's hung that Remington over the water in his boiling tank allowing it to rust. Got my operations out of order.

I've picked up some Brownell's rust blue and a carding brush. People seem to have good results with it very similar to Pilkingtons.

Off to the Ithaca forum to see your work. Thanks for the response!

 

For slow rust bluing, there is nothing better than this: https://www.brownells.com/gunsmith-tool ... d7780.aspx
The reason it is better is that it contains a detergent and will work perfectly even if you handle the polished parts bare handed. I know it says "barrel brown", but the only difference between browning and bluing is the boiling in water and carding phase. The guy that developed this stuff is/was a chemist and decided that all the precautions necessary to keep the polished parts free of skin oil ( fingerprints) were ridiculous and added a detergent. This feature is especially useful when carding the black rust because of the difficulty of restraining the parts while trying to get in all the nooks and crannies with your brush. You can do it bare-handed without problems. Like all rust blues, it works very well on plain carbon steel and less well on 4140 type alloys. The color on the alloys is just not as deep a blue as with the plain steels.

WOB