Dilute Gun Blue or buy more?

I mainly use Caswell's "Black Oxide". That's just the name of the product, it's a cold blue solution. Price has gone up & it may seem expensive but it's worth it IMO cause it's a concentrate. You can mix it 1:9 parts of water. A pint is the smallest container size you can buy (haven't looked recently) & you can mix over 1 gallon of solution with it (I mix as needed). Works really pretty well for me too unlike a few other common name brands I've tried.

(Pics in post 17)
https://www.hobby-machinist.com/thr...ur-custom-made-tools.60163/page-2#post-496249

EDIT: It's currently $32 (+ shipping) for a pint. You don't need to buy their kits. Although I have it, you don't even need their recommened sealer. I just coat with oil like with any other cold blue.
https://caswellplating.com/black-oxide-kits.html
 
Most kits are about the same, except that Birchwood Casey almost uniformly sucks. Yes, I've had occasional good luck with it as well (on the world's least-deserving pile o' crap bolt-action 20-ga). If you hit that one alloy that it seems to work for it's great. (Incidentally, B-C used to have a 'gel' rust converter that was awesome - must've been a mix of 1,1,1 Trichloroethane and Carbon Tetrachloride, because it's unobtanium today, but it was the one B-C product I'd endorse...

Except for RustBlue which is an altogether different (and tedious) animal, they're all about the same. Caswell and Oxpho-Blue (Brownell's) probably differ more by alloy / instance than anything else.

GsT
 
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