Protecting a polished part prior to bluing

I am getting ready to blue a rifle using the DIY bluing formula I found in a book.

Unfortunately I won't be able to polish all the parts at once and then blue them the same day. I was wondering how to protect the polished parts until it was time to clean/degrease and blue them.

It would probably be up to a month before all the parts were ready to be blued, and I would like to blue them all on the same day to get a uniform color. Would coating the polished parts in oil be enough to protect the finish? Maybe give the parts a quick polish using Flitz before bluing?

A good coating of a light oil like WD40 will probably be enough to keep your polished gun from rusting provided you store it in a dry atmosphere until you blue it. Don't keep it in a damp basement, etc. A water displacing oil like WD40 will absorb water and discolor the polished surface.

Chances are in a month a well polished surface will have spots of discoloration, even with a coating of oil. If it were me, on the day you are going to do the blueing I would start out by doing one last light polish job on all the parts using the last grade of polishing compound you used on the initial polish job. Clean and degrease the gun before and again after finishing this final polish.

Don't count on a blue job to hide anything on the gun. Any imperfections and discolorations on the surface will be visible through the blueing.

Good luck

I expect a good coat of Break Free CLP would do an adequate job of protecting. But it definitely will require a thorough degreasing prior to bluing.

I have a 16 gage side by side with a polished reciever, no extra protection, no blueing and no rust after 8 years.

The humidity in south KS cant be much higher than norther OK. I think you will be fine, unless you store it in the shower.

Thanks for the replies. I thought the oil coating would work, but justed wanted to get some other opinions.

I use Brownells "Hold " sometimes for longer than a month between polish and bluing.

brownells hold.. do NOT NOT NOT NOT use any newfangled super penetration/protection oils on parts to be blued.. they can seep into the micrograin of the metal and NOT NOT NOT allow them to blue properly.

j

I have wrapped polished parts in "lightly" oiled shop rags and stowed them away in a dry place for a few weeks then I used parts wash or zep to degrease them and they blued perfectly.

Remember blueing is just controled rust. So some oils are hard to remove and may spot or foil you blueing job.

Brother in Arms

Also something that I have used to ship parts to colorcase and polished and did not to use any oil would to vacum pack the parts in a food grade bag that comes with the vacum sealings bag you can buy at discount retailers or the Kroger store.
Add a disacant pack or VCI block or paper
Seems to work to keep parts from rusting.
Plus with a good seal those bags are pretty tough and the partss are not lost. In fact I use those bags to seal up so of the parts I make and sell.
I work in a packing house as a machinist and the stuff we vacum package is sold over to Japan and it takes it awhile to ship in cold storearge. and everbody knows how hard it is to cut open a sealed pack of ribs.

Brownells Hold is designed for this, No petroleum products in it............neutralizes body acids/fingerprints

Good grief! Head for the local newspaper and get some remnant UNPRINTED news print stock, wrap the parts in that keeping your fingers off the parts. When I did heavy duty bluing for dealers I would sometimes spend a full week polishing the parts. I had a stack of surplus wooden In and Out mail boxes for military desk duty. You can use the newer plastic ones .Line it with this paper. The little stuff can just lay on the paper. Receivers, Magazine tubes, barrels and other larger objects should be individually wrapped in this paper. For immersion bluing where you wire the parts, I did this wiring until the assortment of felt, leather,cotton poplin, and wood wheels dried from recharging the grit, and went back to polishing. Occasionally some enterprizing genius would apply spray can saltwater protection preservatives to his own polish job, and since the preservatives had a recognisable smell he got it all back clanking in the the same corrugated box it was tossed into. Those wrapped in cloth got the same treatment after a short examination. Why? the weave of the cloth absorbed water and you could see the rust in the 150 watt clear bulb incandescent light. I had blued samples to show the result. Most of this rush was about 3 weeks from opening day, so after season repairing was the drill and sometimes the parts would be a month in the paper. In those days you could use newspaper if they hadn't gone to vegetable oil based ink, but I normally got roll ends as freebies. So, do not oil, that has already been covered in previous postings, avoid cloth like poison. If the humidity is only two clicks less than the temperature double wrapping wouldn't hurt as insurance.
Tom Burgess ( Thos.M.)
Kalispell, MT

As for what to use there seems to be many ways of keeping polished guns from rusting before bluing.
I have used regular newspaper with OK results after puting HOLD on them. And the vacum packing has worked as well for me.
Several ways are fine if they work for you. Use them.
I will say that the use of the CLP type oils will mess up bluing from my experence. But they can be removed by boling parts in water with Greased Lighting in a tank.
WD-40 would be better.