I should probably point out the vicious nature of a tank full of 290 degree F lye.
Hung out the shingle a few days ago, the Ruger will be a matte finish example piece. Hoping the business takes off as work is getting a bit hard to find lately particularly at my age. Going for all the marbles with repair, refinish, and parkerizing on site.
The killer for setup was the equipment which fortunately I made, modded or repaired mostly from collected junk. 30 pounds of lye was 50 bucks shipped which reminds me I have to contact local law enforcement as it's considered a percussor chemical. Don't want them getting the idea I'm cooking meth instead of guns.
Enough of that stuff, back to the bluing.
Clean of all oil, rust, paint, and crud before it goes in the tank. I've tried only isopropyl alcohol scrub / rinse, hot TSP solution then hot / boiling water rinse, and good old brake clean all by its own bad self for a final cleaning before hanging the pieces in the bluing tank and haven't seen a difference in any of the test steel or the firearm parts yet. I suspect some steels will give me problems without the heat up in a hot water rinse tank eventually. Since I'm gonna try to make a living with this foolishness I'm probably going to go overboard with the setup and tooling but will get some pics of a cheapo pistol size triple tank on a single burner I'm in the middle of building.
More to follow...
