As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.........
All of you have seen a gun and noted how it is always a black or a blue color. I know that none of you have ever pondered why a gun is blue and your silverware is bright and shining. I place the following 19th century methods as an archive of methods now lost in blueing, browning and staining gun metals.
For those who think this all boring as has been the case and all are far too intelligent to be bothered with the following recipes, I would this time have you skip to the bottom to get the lesson in your being oh so very smart in not needing these things.
1 oz. muriate tincture of steel. 1 oz. spirits of wine. 1 / 4 oz. muriate of mercury. 1 / 4 oz. strong nitric acid. 1 / 8 oz. blue stone. 1 quart of water.
"These are to be well mixed, and allowed to stand a month, to amalgamate. After the oil or grease has been removed from the barrels by lime, the mixture is laid on lightly with a sponge every two hours. It should be scratched off with a steel-wire brush night and morning, until the barrels are dark enough; and then the acid is destroyed by pouring on the barrels boiling water, and continuing to rub them till nearly cool."
William Greener. Gunnery in 1858 / Being a Treatise on Rifles, Cannon, and Sporting Arms
"The Birmingham people brown their barrels of inferior quality in the following way, to make them look equal to the best. They dissolve as much muriate of mercury as can be taken up in a dram -glassful of spirits of wine; this solution is mixed with one pint of water, or as much diluted as the person requires. A small quantity of the mixture is poured on a little whitening, and laid on the barrel with a sponge, rather lightly ; as soon as dry, it is brushed off, and a fresh coat is laid on; and so on until the barrel is dark enough, which is generally about two days. The effect that the mercury has on every one of the joints of the fibres is wonderful: it never fails to make them, in two or three days at most, a beautiful brown; while the other parts, being harder, remain, comparatively speaking, quite light. The rust is killed by hot water, but after that, the barrels are suddenly immersed in cold water; which has the effect of heightening the brightness of both the colours."
William Greener. Gunnery in 1858 / Being a Treatise on Rifles, Cannon, and Sporting Arms
The method of staining is this: the barrels are anointed with a little vitriolic acid, to cause the iron to receive the effect of the gas more readily; it is then washed off, and the barrels rubbed dry. The forge fire must then be lighted, and blown up with coal possessing as much the iron a shade darker, with the outlines of both distinctly preserved. Rub the barrels dry, and again pass them through the flame precisely as before; but above all things be careful not to allow them to remain in the flame till they become hot enough to melt the solder. When you have once passed them through, do not be in a hurry to pass them again; but in both be guided by moderation: neither allow them, after the first time, to stand to rust more than twelve hours each time. Polish them as before, and you will find them a shade darker at every smoking. Persevere, until they become as dark as you wish to have them. The utmost you can obtain is a fine purple-black colour on the iron; and on the steel, a shade inclined to a copper colour:
William Greener. Gunnery in 1858 / Being a Treatise on Rifles, Cannon, and Sporting Arms
*The point in recording all of these processes is the reality of showing you how much you do not know. The point of showing you that America just did not happen. If you make a firearm without treating the metal, it will rust. That might be better than having your shining gun giving away your position to be murdered, but all the same, that rust will eat your implement of defense to nothing and leave you with just rocks to club your enemy to death.
Why do you think when the traders came to the Indians that the Indians traded away their expensive furs and horses? It was not for idiotic beads of vanity, but it was for mirrors, needles, cooking pots and knives.
Just THINK for a few moments in how bright you are, in what it requires to make a needle to sew something, something like your ripped pants which when the lights go out, you are going to have to have a loom to weave cloth to try and even get you clothes to wear......from cotton.....which needs southern heat and oh yes gins to take the seeds out and wheels to spin it.....
Yes go find metal for a needle, and then figure out how to make it hard, and then put that little hole in the end for thread so it does not tear bigger holes in your clothing.......
Make a mirror, so that you can comb the nits out of your hair, get the acne under control so your face does not fall off........yes a mirror, just how many of you know how to melt sand, then what do you polish it with.......and what do you put on the back of the glass to make it reflect......where does that metal come from?
See you all run around looking for some new gossip to thrill yourselves and none of you are investing the time to carry some knowledge in your brains in how to survive. You know nothing of geology to fine ores or coal. You have not the sense in how to even dig a well for clean water. You could not wipe your asses if you did no have toilet paper.
I will be good to you in solving that phobia in how it was accomplished. People of another age, obtained a wad of wool from a sheep, fastened it to a handle, and then put it into a bucket of water to wash themselves that way, so they did not stink like manure.
It really bothers me not how stupid peopl are, but how stupidly arrogant they are in thinking they know better than to waste time on this blog as things placed here have no value.
In the age ahead, a person who knows how to use a shovel in digging, in not breaking the shovel or creating a cave in, is going to be of far more value than someone with a pile of gold which is worthless.
All of your grand possessions are going to disappear in two decades, and it is because Benjamin Franklin will no longer be available. What I mean by that is simple. Benjamin Franklin advocated fire fighting crews. Cities used to burn down constantly in the 19th century. Sooner or later without electricity and water towers, every American city is going to burn down. The same with the rural dwellings as without the means to keep all that dry tinder eaten or ploughed, those houses will be burned up too.
You think you are all safe and this is all permanent. It will all disappear faster than you could dream. I have a Lame Cherry prediction in matter anti matter here. As fast as America was peopled from a wilderness, America will be depeopled and become a wilderness even faster. It will not be generations, but during a person's lifetime.
You are not so bright and require being informed how really stupid you are. You scorn physical labor like farming with a hoe and yet none of you could build a hoe to work with as you know not the wood, the wright nor the smyth's tools to create one.
Lesson done.
The recipe, for the Birmingham imitations, is as follows:
— 1 oz. sweet nitre.
1 / 2 oz. tincture of steel.
1 / 4 oz. blue vitriol.
6 drops nitric acid.
14 grs. corrosive sublimate.
1 pint of water.
When the barrels are dark enough, drop a few drops of muriatic acid in a basin of water, and wash the barrel slightly, to brighten the twists.
“The method of browning the Damascus barrels, which are so much admired in England for their distinctness in colour and beauty of figure, is obtained very simply: namely, first burnish the barrels very fine ; then cover them with bone oil; pound, or drop, or strew wood-ashes all over; then heat them in a cage of wire filled with charcoal, until you obtain a dark first blue; after they are cold, mix a small quantity of sulphuric acid in water (a quarter of a pint with so many drops); then take a hard brush and apply it to the barrel, when the acid will extract the colour from the steel, leaving the iron with its greater adhesion covered with the blue colour. Great care must be used and skill displayed to keep a good colour and not to extract too much.”
This we cannot do, because we solder with tin.
"The “Belgian Damascus” barrels are generally “eat up,” as it is technically termed. “Pickled” is the term also used to describe the process, which is simply eating away the softer metals from around the steel or harder material. The best preparation for this purpose is 1 lb. of the sulphate of copper (known as blue vitriol) dissolved in a gallon of soft water, at the boiling point, and continued boiling in an earthenware vessel, until the quantity is reduced by evaporation 25 per cent.; let it cool, and then pour it into a leaden trough or bath.
The barrels, when properly secured at the muzzle and breech-ends to prevent the liquid getting into the interior, are immersed therein. The solution will act sufficiently upon the metals in the space of from fifteen to twenty minutes; care being taken to remove and carefully wash them with cold water, and then, after observing the progress of the pickling, re-immersing them as before, until the operation is complete. Then pour boiling water over them, and scratch them well with a steel brush, which will eventually give that beautiful bright “wavy” surface much admired by many people. Laminated steel barrels also look very well, after being subjected to this operation."
William Greener. Gunnery in 1858 / Being a Treatise on Rifles, Cannon, and Sporting Arms
agtG
