Bob Smalser?

[Alan D. Hyde]

So just what WAS the old browning solution used on firearms for many years (that I mentioned in the "Rust Wonder Treatment" thread) called???

____ acid?

Do you have any idea what I'm talking about? I don't... :D

Alan

[Bob Smalser]

Sorry. Dunno and can't find it.

[John E Hardiman]

Do you mean "browning" or the similar "Parkerizing"? There are several formulas for each that give different colors. Or are you thinking of phosphoric acid, which forms a stable ferric compound with rust?

[Dick Millet]

Nitric acid

[Nicholas Carey]

From the Mountain Man Dist-List (http://www.xmission.com/~drudy/hist_text-arch4/msg01822.html):<span style="font-family:monospace"></font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: fixed;">&gt;another from circa 1865...
&gt;
&gt;To Brown Iron and Steel Objects.
&gt;
&gt;Dissolve 2 parts of crystallized chloride of iron, 2 parts of solid
&gt;chloride of antimony, and 1 part of gallic acid, in 4 or 5 parts of
&gt;water.
&gt;With this moisten a piece of sponge or cloth and apply to the object,
&gt;a
&gt;gun-barrel for instance. Let it dry in the air, and repeat the
&gt;operation
&gt;several times; then wash with water; dry, and rub with boiled
&gt;linseed-oil.
&gt;Objects browned in this way have a very agreeable dead gray
&gt;appearance, and
&gt;the shade deepens according to the number of times the operation is
&gt;repeated.
&gt;
&gt;end receipts...
&gt;
&gt;Chemical Equivalents
&gt;
&gt;Aqua Fortis = Nitric Acid
&gt;Spirit of Salt = Hydrochloric or Muriatic Acid
&gt;
&gt;Chloridizing (converting various metals into a chloride by treating
&gt;with
&gt;chlorine or hydrochloric acid) was developed in the late nineteenth
&gt;century.
&gt;
&gt;Gallic or Gallotonnic Acid = Nut Gall derivative.</pre>[/QUOTE]

The Muzzle-loader Mailing List (http://members.aol.com/illinewek/faqs/browning.htm) sez this should do you:
There have been numerous requests on the MLML for information about barrel browning, so this explanation of how I do it is an attempt to share what I have learned about it over the course of 15 or 20 barrels.

The traditional method of browning is by rusting the barrel in some fashion. This was accomplished in a number of ways in the good old days starting with the easiest method of leaving the barrel somewhere damp to rust and probably more often using some corrosive chemical mixture to accelerate this process. I have tried using oxidizers which are readily available such as black powder dissolved in water and the washings from the barrel but these seem to be very slow and do not seem to rust very uniformly. The mixture I use comes from one of two listed in Foxfire 5. Both mixtures appear to be very similar and I am not sure which I used 16 years ago when I made up about 1 quart of it. The formula is approximately;

1 oz muriate tincture of steel (ferrous chloride )
1 oz spirits of wine (any of the alcohols; I use isopropyl)
1/4 oz muriate of mercury (mercuric chloride)
1/4 oz strong nitric acid (concentrated nitric acid)
1/8 oz blue stone (copper sulphate)
1 qt. Water

At this point a warning and an explanation; mercuric chloride obviously contains mercury and copper sulphate and ferrous chloride probably aren't good for you either. Use good rubber gloves when handling this stuff. Secondly, always ADD ACID TO WATER . In operation I think that the nitric acid and the metallic salts do the rusting and the alcohol is there primarily to break the surface tension of the liquid so that it spreads out more evenly. I have recently noticed that the alcohol seems to reduce or prevent the copper sulphate from temporarily copper plating the barrel.

[ 08-06-2004, 01:44 AM: Message edited by: Nicholas Carey ]