Birchwood Casey Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Perma Blue Paste/Liquid Gun Blue for Steel, Touch-Up & Complete Reblue

This is a review for Birchwood Casey PSP Gun Blue (3oz) bottle. First let me start by saying my purpose for using this product was not typical. I had some hitch rings that were steel with zinc plating that I wanted to make dark for a woodworking project I had. As this metal (although ferrous - as is required) was zinc plated, my hope was that scratching it with the 0000 steel wool Red Devil 0320 8-Pack Steel Wool, 0000 Super Fine would help open it up enough to reach the ferrous metal beneath. Please note the pictures included with this review for the process I used and the quality of the final product. Let me preface this by saying that disposable gloves and a clean work environment with paper towels or newspaper to catch any spills is advisable. First, I followed instructions: Prepping the metal: 1) Cleaning the metal - They recommend their own brand of cleaner, of course - however I simply used some rubbing alcohol and cotton swabs, which worked well. 2) With a small pad of steel wool, polish the metal lightly to remove old bluing and surface rust. Continue until metal is shiny. (I found that this was particularly important in the later stages when I found uneven darkening in my work. More on that later.) 3) If the metal suffers from deep scratches and/or pitting, sand the affected areas with fine 280-grit paper followed by a steel wool polish. A file may be needed for deep pits. (This step wasn't necessary on my project as the metal was new and without any discernible blemishes.) 4) Whatever you do, don’t try and rush metal preparation. Keep polishing until everything looks right. (This really is critical. Don't start applying the bluing until you have a good finished product that's blemish-free. Your finished work will thank you by looking great.) 5) Re-apply the Cleaner & Degreaser, scrub with a sponge and rinse again with cold water. At this point, be careful not to touch the metal with your fingers as this can leave tell-tale marks after bluing caused by the natural oils from your hand. (Used rubbing alcohol for this process as well and the disposable gloves were on - saves your work from having an "oops". I can't stress this enough - you brush your arm, wrist, hand, finger, nose or whatever on the metal, you cannot see it. But the bluing will help you see it clearly later on.) Bluing: 1) Apply Birchwood Casey Perma Blue Paste or Liquid Gun Blue with an applicator swab over the entire surface to be blued. Work as quickly as you can, but remember to be thorough. Rather than blueing the entire surface at one time, you may want to divide the work into 2 or 3 sections. (I found two things to be important with this step. One, be generous with your liquid. I don't mean pour the bottle over your project, but let your swab soak and don't squeeze it dry. Two, move quickly and smoothly over the metal - I was working on a 2" square surface plus a 2" ring - I did the whole piece in one shot, making sure to coat both sides of the ring plus the outer and inner ring with fresh dips into the bottle.) 2) Allow the blueing to stand on the metal for 30-60 seconds. No longer. Then neutralize the chemical reaction by rinsing immediately and thoroughly with cold water and wipe dry. (30-60 seconds is plenty of time - seriously) 3) After or during rinsing, polish very lightly with fine steel wool to blend the color if needed. If steel wool is used, you must use Cleaner & Degreaser again to remove any surface oils that may have been introduced. Appraise the blueing for coverage. If streaking exists or you desire a deeper/darker blue, simply repeat steps 1, 2, and 3 until the desired color is obtained. (After the rinsing - during the rinsing is kind of silly in my opinion as the water is going to distort what you see. The key here is VERY LIGHTLY. If you go heavy, you'll pull some of the bluing off. If you have spots that are darker than the rest, add a little pressure and they will even out. However, this is one a one step process, so don't worry too much about the color at this point.) 4) Saturate all areas with Birchwood Casey Barricade Rust Protection and allow your new blueing to cure overnight. (Well, I used a very light coating of 3in1 oil and let it sit overnight, which gave it a fantastic finish and cleaned up quickly and easily. I should point out that for me, it took three coats to hit the level of darkness I wanted and to make it very even. On the last round, the metal never saw the steel wool. I rubbed it dry with a towel and lightly oiled it to let it sit overnight.) Overall I was pleased with the process and the outcome. It gave a fantastic browning to the metal which looked amazing on the wood project. Time will tell how well this will hold up, but if it fails, I'm going to assume it's due to the metal not being top grade ferrous metal and instead low grade metal with a zinc plating that needed to be bypassed.

I've been buying this for years. Easy to use and very effective. Gives a great look! Reliable item. Highly recommend it!

Actually, I didn't buy this to do gun bluing, but to make screws look old by applying bluing to the screws, according to forums on aging metal parts for old-looking type woodwork I was doing. I was in the process of building a table from old rough sawn barn boards, and leaving screw heads visible on one side of each of the legs was going to be unavoidable, so I needed a way to make the screws look old. I decided on large flathead slotted wood screws, as philips head screws aren't vintage, and I needed them to look old and dark right off, rather than bright and shiny new out of the box. Dipping the screw heads into the gun bluing for about 20 seconds, then laying them on a paper towel for a few minutes before wiping the residue off left the heads looking old and faded black, much like what is found on very old wood products where screws were used in the construction. Worked really well for this. The time spent in the liquid allows some variance in the appearance of the aging, so some experimentation showed me just what I wanted. It did not dirty the liquid in the bottle, either, so it remains usable for next time. The screws I used were zinc plated steel, which is about the most common kind of screw out there nowadays, and was indicated in the forums as the ideal for this, next to plain steel; it is not supposed to work on stainless steel.

Worked good on my throwing axe! Didn’t have very good luck in touching up, but it did work good for doing the entire piece at one time! Someone on YouTube that said to soak it in oil overnight after treating! This did not work out good for me. I had to redo the piece! If you follow the directions, it works really good! The color difference is in the photos is because it’s two different qualities of Steel but same initial finish on both! I polished this piece down to raw steel! Not a mirror finish but close!

I never guessed bluing metal would be so easy. I spent the $10. I rubbed it on what had become bare metal and it instantly darkened. I didn’t realize an application would be only 30 to 60 seconds. You can wipe it off and repeat until you get as dark a color as you want. Then wipe on a drop of oil and you may have erased decades of what looked like wear but was only the loss of a nano layer of oxidation

Works well on tools. Prep is 90% of the outcome.

SUPERB! I had fine grit emery papered by hand to remove an engraving at the breech, (older Remington bolt single .22) but had to get down to bare shiny silver steel. Wiped well, applied this, three coats And it's as good as new look!

Fast bluing, easily controlled paste bluing for ferrous metals, like iron and steel. Easily controlled and stop the chemical process. Wipe it off and oil it to stop. Rub on more to make it darker.

Only complaint if I had to come up with one is that the package was leaking when I got it but other then that it work’s really well.

I used it just once on a small item and it worked well. Hard to say how even it lays on bigger surfaces, but so far so good. Remember that it won't work on chrome/nickel coated surfaces. Like at all. Those coatings must be removed first, and the blue must be applied on iron-based surface.

Fácil de aplicar y no se cupa gran cantidad a mi parecer

No funciona, ya casi voy por la mitad del producto y no cambia ni un poquito el color del metal.

Que le produit est bon .