How much trouble to blue a stainless, or matt black rifle receiver?

[VaniB]

Is it a lot of trouble for a bluing service to remove that modern matt black finish on a modern Remington 700 receiver, trigger guard and floor plate, and apply traditional bluing? Or, is it possible to do it to a stainless action? I want a traditional slick polished blue finish like the old BDL rifles have.

It's a 17 Fireball I want, and I can get a good deal on a 17 Fireball, but they usually come in stainless steel barreled actions, or that heavy matt black finish.

 

[alinwa]

Traditional bluing only works on chrome-moly or non-stainless actions. The reason for a matte finish is to eliminate a bunch of finishing steps, in other words.... it's cheaper. The floorplate may present a problem. Many of them will not take bluing either. You may have to upgrade to a higher quality billet part from a company like Brownells.

The only product of which I'm aware that gives a similar look to SS is the Melonite process, or "melonizing".....this is a high temperature salt bath similar to conventional bluing which yields a deep, tough, black finish similar to bluing. Like bluing it will reflect your surface preparation, the more time you spend polishing the awesomer the finish. A poor preparation will show every scratch. Finding a company to melonize a gun part can take some time.

al

 

[axlenut]

I had a CM trigger guard assembly back chrome plated years ago due to brazed modifications. This was a standard electroplating process that is applied over a copper sub plating. It is dark and shiny and resists scratching very well. This process was recommended to me for stainless barrels years ago, but didn't seem worth the effort.

A newer process is Mil-spec and can be applied to firearms after a hard chrome plating is applied. It is .0002" thick. The process requires pre and post plating stress relieving to prevent hydrogen embrittlement of steel parts over R40C. You might check with the vendor for suitability.

www.techplate.com/black_chrome.htm

 

[KenG]

You would have to buy a new trigger guard (new ones are not steel) but the matt finish can be polished off and blued. Warning it's a lot of work, I put a weatherby finish on a bead blasted blue finish remington and it turned out really nice.