How to rust blue bicycle parts
08-24-15, 09:22 PM
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How to rust blue bicycle parts
I've been working to rebuild a Mercier 100 frame with parts from the bins at San Francisco's Bike Kitchen. There were no forks, and the best option available was a set of 1" threadless steel forks marked only "Tange" with rubberized red paint which was rather ghastly even if it didn’t clash with the frame. Having just finished bluing them and being pretty happy with the results, figured I’d share my process. I’m posting here rather than the Classic and Vintage or Frame Builders forums since it applies to pretty much anything unfinished made from a carbon steel alloy.
First step was to take the paint off using paint stripper and rough-grade steel wool. Once the paint was gone from all but the smallest nooks and crannies, I sanded them with emery paper to get the last bits of paint, using 80, 140 and 220 grit starting vertically and switching orientation. Then I wet-sanded with 600 and 1000 grit aluminum oxide, again alternating directions, until I had a nice brushed finish. It was a significant visual improvement, so I cleaned and waxed them and mounted them on my bike (knowing they would need close attention).
After over a month of increasing riding but no real weather, rust spots did develop but only where it had been hit with drops splashed from cans of diet cola (which gets its tang from citric, not phosphoric, acid). I kept busy wrenching and riding to see how they would progress, knowing that I'd be putting a final polish on everything once the bike was done from a mechanical standpoint. Meanwhile I researched patinas and provenance.
I did like the bare-steel look, especially as it revealed the contrasting brass brazing around the lugs. However, research suggested clear-coating was inadvisable. Chroming them would be heavier than paint and the cost was prohibitive for me. Among corrosion-resistant patinas, the best options seemed to be phosphating or Parkerizing and browning or bluing, both of which are regularly done at home by small arms enthusiasts. You can purchase "cold blue" kits fairly inexpensively, but reports indicate they are difficult to apply evenly which were confirmed by some photos of cold-blued frames I saw. "Hot blue" is out of the question as a DIY project, but while the traditional "rust blue" is the most time-intensive, it's also much more forgiving, inexpensive, and relatively non-toxic -- on one forum I read a poster who insisted on using only salt, vinegar and rain water boiled over a wood fire to blue a barrel.
(When I told my partner of this Ron Swanson-esque approach, she replied with a pretty good Nick Offerman impression: "Bicycles are for small children and circus bears. I would not ride a bicycle unless it had four wheels, a powerful engine and was called a 'truck.'")
The date of frame manufacture is probably from the bike boom, circa '73, but it was easy enough to place its builder geographically thanks to the "Made in France" sticker on the head tube and the "Mercier, Saint-Etienne" sticker on the seat tube. Most, if not all, industrial bicycle and component manufacturers switched to arms during wartime, with other centers of cycling industry like Birmingham, England and Ashtabula, Ohio have significant swords-to-plowshares history, but Saint-Etienne was actually renamed Armeville during the French Revolution, and both frames and guns were made under the same roof at one of the few remaining factory buildings left standing. So "weaponizing" my forks also seemed in keeping with its backstory.
Having finished the build, and assembled what I needed, I went ahead and did a teardown. The forks cleaned up with a scrubber sponge and simple green, the rust spots leaving only some dark spots, hardly pitting even the "brushed" marks on the surface. I did not file out some small marks made by a vise, I did further wet-sand then scrub with #0000steel wool and hand-polish with Mothers, giving me a smooth satin. There was still a little paint in the rougher lug surfaces and some corners of the drops, so I hit those up with another round of stripper, steel wool and polish. Since you can't polish bluing or browning with abrasives without removing it, you'll want to be satisfied with the shine on the bare metal before you start.
You also want the metal as clean as you can get it, because any oils will effectively mask the solution and make the finish uneven. After polish, I used dilute Simple Green and a sponge followed by rubbing alcohol and cotton swabs. From this point on, it was pretty much always handled either by the stem-end of the fork steerer (which I didn't intend to treat) with latex gloves on or, when hot, with clean, dry cotton or paper towels. I also chose Laurel Mountain Forge Barrel Browning & Degreaser for the solution, in part because it includes a solvent and soap in case I accidentally touched it with bare hands.
You will need a browning solution, something to apply it with (I used cotton balls, but swabs or soft cloth work), and something to "card" off the resulting scale rust. I used the same #0000 steel wool, but anything between a proper carding wheel to rough denim will work. You do not have to buy solution—I did some tests using just salt, vinegar and hydrogen peroxide that did almost immediately start to form surface rust-but you’ll probably get more consistent results more quickly if you do, and it’s not very expensive (I paid $19.05 including shipping for the 2.5 ounce bottle, which is probably more than enough for an entire frame).
You can use tap water if you are going to be browning parts. But if you want "blued" instead of "browned" finish, you'll need a vessel roughly big enough to boil your parts in and enough distilled water to fill it at least twice. The reason you can't use tap water is because the mineral content will interfere with the process of converting the red iron oxide to black iron oxide. You can buy the latter fairly inexpensively by the gallon at a drug store or supermarket (I paid between $1.29 and $0.99 a gallon for nine gallons total). Pyrex is probably the ideal material for boiling the water, though you can also use galvanized steel or boil the water in anything clean and then pour them over parts in heat-resistant plastic like PVC tubes (though this might require more changes of the distilled water). I used an enameled iron pan with lid like you might roast a turkey in.
(While I’m aware heat can potentially weaken steel, I figured heating it to 100 degrees centigrade a handful of times for less than twenty minutes at a time would not come anywhere close to the point of annealing it even briefly.)
The warmer and wetter the environment, the faster the solution works. If you live somewhere that’s not very humid and can’t leave parts hanging in a humid indoor environment like the bathroom, you can construct a tent or booth chamber and either change in towels and sponges soaked in hot water or set a pan of water over a heating element.
I essentially followed the instructions included with the solution from Laurel Mountain Forge, though having watched a video from Larry Potterfield of MidwayUSA using Pilkington’s Rust Bluing Solution was a big help. The basic steps are:
Apply a very thin coat of solution lightly and evenly in a single direction with minimal overlap. In the case of Laurel Mountain Forge’s solution, rubbing or re-coating areas can cause a copper film to form that will mottle the finish. In the case of small parts, or corners (like around lug joints) you can dab instead of swipe.
Set the parts aside to rust. The longest I went was a little over three hours, outdoors on a moderate San Francisco summer evening, so about 55-60 degrees and 60-70% humidity. That produced a streaky red patina. The shortest was a little over an hour, with the forks in a plastic gardening planter tented with plastic wrap and a couple of hits from a handheld clothes steamer. It was rusting so fast I cut the cycle short because I didn’t want the metal to get pitted. Using homemade salt and vinegar solution and leaving the parts outdoors on the high desert plains of New Mexico during winter and you might have to wait a few days.
Once the parts have a good coating in red powder, you’ll want to submerge them in the boiling water for 5-15 for bluing. Since my forks didn’t quite fit in my pan, I would rotate them and flip them end to end over the course of 15 minutes. The first boil is the most important for bluing, and you’ll want to change out the water before the second. You can re-use the water, but I found the conversion to blue-black a little slower with each re-use, so if you’re simply pouring boiling water over the parts you might want to use new water with each pass. Since the only thing that comes off the parts is a minute amount of solution and a larger amount of loose rust, I simply washed the pan well and intend to continue roasting turkeys in it.
Once the part is boiled or rinse, set it aside to dry. You don’t want to card while it’s wet, though not because the water is toxic or will harm anything, but because the loose rust and water will form a nice abrasive so if you go back over an area you might scratch up the patina you just produced. I would card by holding the forks from the untreated end of the steerer and resting the drops on a chair, using fresh steel wool and working my way up from the drops so that gravity and wind would carry off the powdered rust.
At this point, you might notice some streaks or patches in your patina. Don’t worry! I accidentally spilled some solution that splashed on the forks, forcing me to rub them clean while wet with corrosive on the first pass, creating all sorts of runs, copper patches and other issues. But between carding with the steel wool and the fact that dark spots will corrode more slowly than the light spots on the next pass, if you do enough passes and it will eventually come out roughly even.
Once you have your forks dry and any loose scale removed, it’s time to reapply solution. Because the product I used includes degreaser, and I was careful not to contaminate the surface, I skipped cleaning them between rounds. I ended up doing a total of five cycles, though I was prepared to do as many as seven. The total time was around 18 hours from start to finish, and if I added more humidity during the rusting I could have cut that shorter. Alternately, you can leave the part carded and dry if you need to put it on hold for a while.
The process will leave corrosive on the part, so per the instructions, I soaked a sponge in a baking soda solution, then a gave it a thorough tap water rinse and isopropyl alcohol wipe-down before applying paste wax. If you’re working with steel tubes, you’ll also want to make sure that the insides are clean and free of rust and only apply rust preventer after any boiling. I forced some compressed air from a can through the vent holes and made sure the water inside came out clear to make sure I didn’t apply Frame Saver over loose rust.
The bluing is fairly fragile, probably equivalent to light anodizing — if waxed properly, you shouldn’t have trouble from skin, fabric, plastics and soft bumps against a bike stand. But the abrasives in Mothers or even finer polishes like Flitz, for instance, will start to take it right off, and metal-to-metal contact even with lubricant will probably wear it very quickly. If you do get scratches or other dings, and the metal is thick enough, you can always re-apply for another couple of cycles or polish it off and start over.
Relatively heavy (presumably CrMo, definitely straigh-gauge) forks seemed appropriate — even a bike falling over on its side rarely sees contact to the forks — and I might go ahead and do some smaller hardware such as the fasteners on a rear fender knowing it will wear off the threads but remain on the visible parts. But I wouldn’t do this to something like butted tubes for fear of polishing or corroding holes in them. Nor would I do cogs, chains, steel rims, galvanized spokes or anything stainless, anodized, plated or still painted.
First step was to take the paint off using paint stripper and rough-grade steel wool. Once the paint was gone from all but the smallest nooks and crannies, I sanded them with emery paper to get the last bits of paint, using 80, 140 and 220 grit starting vertically and switching orientation. Then I wet-sanded with 600 and 1000 grit aluminum oxide, again alternating directions, until I had a nice brushed finish. It was a significant visual improvement, so I cleaned and waxed them and mounted them on my bike (knowing they would need close attention).
After over a month of increasing riding but no real weather, rust spots did develop but only where it had been hit with drops splashed from cans of diet cola (which gets its tang from citric, not phosphoric, acid). I kept busy wrenching and riding to see how they would progress, knowing that I'd be putting a final polish on everything once the bike was done from a mechanical standpoint. Meanwhile I researched patinas and provenance.
I did like the bare-steel look, especially as it revealed the contrasting brass brazing around the lugs. However, research suggested clear-coating was inadvisable. Chroming them would be heavier than paint and the cost was prohibitive for me. Among corrosion-resistant patinas, the best options seemed to be phosphating or Parkerizing and browning or bluing, both of which are regularly done at home by small arms enthusiasts. You can purchase "cold blue" kits fairly inexpensively, but reports indicate they are difficult to apply evenly which were confirmed by some photos of cold-blued frames I saw. "Hot blue" is out of the question as a DIY project, but while the traditional "rust blue" is the most time-intensive, it's also much more forgiving, inexpensive, and relatively non-toxic -- on one forum I read a poster who insisted on using only salt, vinegar and rain water boiled over a wood fire to blue a barrel.
(When I told my partner of this Ron Swanson-esque approach, she replied with a pretty good Nick Offerman impression: "Bicycles are for small children and circus bears. I would not ride a bicycle unless it had four wheels, a powerful engine and was called a 'truck.'")
The date of frame manufacture is probably from the bike boom, circa '73, but it was easy enough to place its builder geographically thanks to the "Made in France" sticker on the head tube and the "Mercier, Saint-Etienne" sticker on the seat tube. Most, if not all, industrial bicycle and component manufacturers switched to arms during wartime, with other centers of cycling industry like Birmingham, England and Ashtabula, Ohio have significant swords-to-plowshares history, but Saint-Etienne was actually renamed Armeville during the French Revolution, and both frames and guns were made under the same roof at one of the few remaining factory buildings left standing. So "weaponizing" my forks also seemed in keeping with its backstory.
Having finished the build, and assembled what I needed, I went ahead and did a teardown. The forks cleaned up with a scrubber sponge and simple green, the rust spots leaving only some dark spots, hardly pitting even the "brushed" marks on the surface. I did not file out some small marks made by a vise, I did further wet-sand then scrub with #0000steel wool and hand-polish with Mothers, giving me a smooth satin. There was still a little paint in the rougher lug surfaces and some corners of the drops, so I hit those up with another round of stripper, steel wool and polish. Since you can't polish bluing or browning with abrasives without removing it, you'll want to be satisfied with the shine on the bare metal before you start.
You also want the metal as clean as you can get it, because any oils will effectively mask the solution and make the finish uneven. After polish, I used dilute Simple Green and a sponge followed by rubbing alcohol and cotton swabs. From this point on, it was pretty much always handled either by the stem-end of the fork steerer (which I didn't intend to treat) with latex gloves on or, when hot, with clean, dry cotton or paper towels. I also chose Laurel Mountain Forge Barrel Browning & Degreaser for the solution, in part because it includes a solvent and soap in case I accidentally touched it with bare hands.
You will need a browning solution, something to apply it with (I used cotton balls, but swabs or soft cloth work), and something to "card" off the resulting scale rust. I used the same #0000 steel wool, but anything between a proper carding wheel to rough denim will work. You do not have to buy solution—I did some tests using just salt, vinegar and hydrogen peroxide that did almost immediately start to form surface rust-but you’ll probably get more consistent results more quickly if you do, and it’s not very expensive (I paid $19.05 including shipping for the 2.5 ounce bottle, which is probably more than enough for an entire frame).
You can use tap water if you are going to be browning parts. But if you want "blued" instead of "browned" finish, you'll need a vessel roughly big enough to boil your parts in and enough distilled water to fill it at least twice. The reason you can't use tap water is because the mineral content will interfere with the process of converting the red iron oxide to black iron oxide. You can buy the latter fairly inexpensively by the gallon at a drug store or supermarket (I paid between $1.29 and $0.99 a gallon for nine gallons total). Pyrex is probably the ideal material for boiling the water, though you can also use galvanized steel or boil the water in anything clean and then pour them over parts in heat-resistant plastic like PVC tubes (though this might require more changes of the distilled water). I used an enameled iron pan with lid like you might roast a turkey in.
(While I’m aware heat can potentially weaken steel, I figured heating it to 100 degrees centigrade a handful of times for less than twenty minutes at a time would not come anywhere close to the point of annealing it even briefly.)
The warmer and wetter the environment, the faster the solution works. If you live somewhere that’s not very humid and can’t leave parts hanging in a humid indoor environment like the bathroom, you can construct a tent or booth chamber and either change in towels and sponges soaked in hot water or set a pan of water over a heating element.
I essentially followed the instructions included with the solution from Laurel Mountain Forge, though having watched a video from Larry Potterfield of MidwayUSA using Pilkington’s Rust Bluing Solution was a big help. The basic steps are:
Apply a very thin coat of solution lightly and evenly in a single direction with minimal overlap. In the case of Laurel Mountain Forge’s solution, rubbing or re-coating areas can cause a copper film to form that will mottle the finish. In the case of small parts, or corners (like around lug joints) you can dab instead of swipe.
Set the parts aside to rust. The longest I went was a little over three hours, outdoors on a moderate San Francisco summer evening, so about 55-60 degrees and 60-70% humidity. That produced a streaky red patina. The shortest was a little over an hour, with the forks in a plastic gardening planter tented with plastic wrap and a couple of hits from a handheld clothes steamer. It was rusting so fast I cut the cycle short because I didn’t want the metal to get pitted. Using homemade salt and vinegar solution and leaving the parts outdoors on the high desert plains of New Mexico during winter and you might have to wait a few days.
Once the parts have a good coating in red powder, you’ll want to submerge them in the boiling water for 5-15 for bluing. Since my forks didn’t quite fit in my pan, I would rotate them and flip them end to end over the course of 15 minutes. The first boil is the most important for bluing, and you’ll want to change out the water before the second. You can re-use the water, but I found the conversion to blue-black a little slower with each re-use, so if you’re simply pouring boiling water over the parts you might want to use new water with each pass. Since the only thing that comes off the parts is a minute amount of solution and a larger amount of loose rust, I simply washed the pan well and intend to continue roasting turkeys in it.
Once the part is boiled or rinse, set it aside to dry. You don’t want to card while it’s wet, though not because the water is toxic or will harm anything, but because the loose rust and water will form a nice abrasive so if you go back over an area you might scratch up the patina you just produced. I would card by holding the forks from the untreated end of the steerer and resting the drops on a chair, using fresh steel wool and working my way up from the drops so that gravity and wind would carry off the powdered rust.
At this point, you might notice some streaks or patches in your patina. Don’t worry! I accidentally spilled some solution that splashed on the forks, forcing me to rub them clean while wet with corrosive on the first pass, creating all sorts of runs, copper patches and other issues. But between carding with the steel wool and the fact that dark spots will corrode more slowly than the light spots on the next pass, if you do enough passes and it will eventually come out roughly even.
Once you have your forks dry and any loose scale removed, it’s time to reapply solution. Because the product I used includes degreaser, and I was careful not to contaminate the surface, I skipped cleaning them between rounds. I ended up doing a total of five cycles, though I was prepared to do as many as seven. The total time was around 18 hours from start to finish, and if I added more humidity during the rusting I could have cut that shorter. Alternately, you can leave the part carded and dry if you need to put it on hold for a while.
The process will leave corrosive on the part, so per the instructions, I soaked a sponge in a baking soda solution, then a gave it a thorough tap water rinse and isopropyl alcohol wipe-down before applying paste wax. If you’re working with steel tubes, you’ll also want to make sure that the insides are clean and free of rust and only apply rust preventer after any boiling. I forced some compressed air from a can through the vent holes and made sure the water inside came out clear to make sure I didn’t apply Frame Saver over loose rust.
The bluing is fairly fragile, probably equivalent to light anodizing — if waxed properly, you shouldn’t have trouble from skin, fabric, plastics and soft bumps against a bike stand. But the abrasives in Mothers or even finer polishes like Flitz, for instance, will start to take it right off, and metal-to-metal contact even with lubricant will probably wear it very quickly. If you do get scratches or other dings, and the metal is thick enough, you can always re-apply for another couple of cycles or polish it off and start over.
Relatively heavy (presumably CrMo, definitely straigh-gauge) forks seemed appropriate — even a bike falling over on its side rarely sees contact to the forks — and I might go ahead and do some smaller hardware such as the fasteners on a rear fender knowing it will wear off the threads but remain on the visible parts. But I wouldn’t do this to something like butted tubes for fear of polishing or corroding holes in them. Nor would I do cogs, chains, steel rims, galvanized spokes or anything stainless, anodized, plated or still painted.
Last edited by jacksonwest; 08-24-15 at 10:01 PM.
08-24-15, 10:06 PM
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Too anal for me. I'll take paint. Andy
08-24-15, 10:35 PM
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Amazing. I dig it.
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08-27-15, 12:05 PM
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Nice job, and a unique look. What about future maintenance?
And BTW, a bike only has one fork.
And BTW, a bike only has one fork.
08-27-15, 12:55 PM
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08-27-15, 01:23 PM
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My only concern is bluing doesn't really protect steel and requires a coat of oil to prevent rust...
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09-03-15, 04:42 AM
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I'm sure I'll get better/faster at spraying if I do it more often, but the rust blue is more like a stew (short bursts of activity over a long overall time with intermittent attention necessary) while the clear coat I followed with more like a stir-fry -- lots of prep work followed but an hour of closely sustained attention and effort. Plus the rust blue was ready to wear, while the paint takes days to really be hard enough for fitting clamps to it (not that I'm so anal I waited more than four, or kept accurate time records). It's all trade-offs, and I'm having fun just playing around with ideas. Right now I have more time than money, so while at first I was thinking some no-brand carbon forks, I got these for free and set about branding them as my own. The more stuff you have to finish, the more sense paint makes, the less sense bluing does. But if you were working on a paint-and-polish project for a good part of the day, seems it wouldn't be hard to give a plastic tub of assorted fasteners or a one-piece crank with worn chrome a rough-and-ready two or three pass rust blue. Incidentally, Parkerization is quicker, offers more a heavy to dark great and also needs wax or oil. I've got some similar dark phosphating on a bunch of bits as a residual bonus of using phosphoric acid remove the red oxide.
As for maintenance, I already have and will continue to use paste wax, as I have/would on lots of other parts, and have added it to my preliminary annual service checklist, but I'm also planning to keep waxing a '73 Raleigh-Carlton frame, paint-and-all. Might be more cause for touch-up-waxes after bumps or spills, but it would light work and infrequent. If even, might consider a spray prep bonder before clear coat it if you want the clean, bare-work look (not that I have, yet), Blue-black might also show better under yellowed clear, and would probably a least delay rust issues faced by bare steel under clear like the spider veins I've heard of.
If I manage to keep this steel fork on the bike (one bike has a fork, three bikes have forks, got it!) and the bike stays with me long enough for enamel to yellow, well, I'll probably be so attached as to spend the time and/or money to do something else. Even if the blue wears off or gets mottle from scratches like anodize does, at least there's no residual paint to strip later!
Incidentally, I saw someone riding another orange Mercier, one of the late-model versions with branding licensed to but frames produced by Kinesis et al. for sale as the BikesDirect house brand with the very type of straight-blade, black, no-brand carbon aftermarket fork I'd also initially considered before realizing I really need the $70 elsewhere. Based on pictures of bare Kilo TT frames, I may actually have ended up with the very same model:
As for maintenance, I already have and will continue to use paste wax, as I have/would on lots of other parts, and have added it to my preliminary annual service checklist, but I'm also planning to keep waxing a '73 Raleigh-Carlton frame, paint-and-all. Might be more cause for touch-up-waxes after bumps or spills, but it would light work and infrequent. If even, might consider a spray prep bonder before clear coat it if you want the clean, bare-work look (not that I have, yet), Blue-black might also show better under yellowed clear, and would probably a least delay rust issues faced by bare steel under clear like the spider veins I've heard of.
If I manage to keep this steel fork on the bike (one bike has a fork, three bikes have forks, got it!) and the bike stays with me long enough for enamel to yellow, well, I'll probably be so attached as to spend the time and/or money to do something else. Even if the blue wears off or gets mottle from scratches like anodize does, at least there's no residual paint to strip later!
Incidentally, I saw someone riding another orange Mercier, one of the late-model versions with branding licensed to but frames produced by Kinesis et al. for sale as the BikesDirect house brand with the very type of straight-blade, black, no-brand carbon aftermarket fork I'd also initially considered before realizing I really need the $70 elsewhere. Based on pictures of bare Kilo TT frames, I may actually have ended up with the very same model:
Last edited by jacksonwest; 09-03-15 at 04:54 AM.
09-03-15, 06:36 AM
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Interesting and well-written article. Are you using furniture paste wax without abrasives? I would guess that the abrasive in auto wax, although mild, might take off the bluing.
09-03-15, 06:50 AM
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I've been using Turtle Wax paste which I bought to wax the Raleigh because it was cheap at AutoZone and it's what my grandma always had. It's the non-abrasive I thought was carnauba-based but probably synthetic. I more recently bought the polishing compound (not polishing wax) to polish the still-soft enamel clear coat I put on the Mercier last week. I will probably buy something with a more neutral color in the future, because while it makes it easy to see where it's been applied or needs to be removed, it does get in hard-to-scrub places and if you miss it early it will dry there pretty impossibly. Still trying to get my fingernails into cracks to scratch tiny light-green bits of dried wax from the lug joints of first one I did without disassembly. What I like about the separate paste and polish is I can use the same paste on almost everything with the flexibility to choose a more appropriate-to-the-material among grit compounds.
ETA: You also do not want to use polishing wax or abrasive anything on blued, browned, phosphate or anodized finishes, probably same goes for most plating like chrome and nickle. Amongst the firearms set, some people will use a very fine abrasive like Flitz to carefully pull a little more lustre out of a blued barrel, but mostly, others get nervous about using Nevr-Dull which is considered safe for brightening up anodize. But the blue-black oxide coating is thin and fragile like anodize, especially light anodize. Hence, all the recommendations I've read say to get whatever abrasion polishing done to the piece your bluing before starting, but I can reassure that said polish doesn'. You can, however, apply blue over blue if you're willing to scratch back and then pile on more, but give another point to paint which you can spot-repair with a good color match or nail polish very quickly.
ETA: You also do not want to use polishing wax or abrasive anything on blued, browned, phosphate or anodized finishes, probably same goes for most plating like chrome and nickle. Amongst the firearms set, some people will use a very fine abrasive like Flitz to carefully pull a little more lustre out of a blued barrel, but mostly, others get nervous about using Nevr-Dull which is considered safe for brightening up anodize. But the blue-black oxide coating is thin and fragile like anodize, especially light anodize. Hence, all the recommendations I've read say to get whatever abrasion polishing done to the piece your bluing before starting, but I can reassure that said polish doesn'. You can, however, apply blue over blue if you're willing to scratch back and then pile on more, but give another point to paint which you can spot-repair with a good color match or nail polish very quickly.
Last edited by jacksonwest; 09-03-15 at 07:12 AM.
09-03-15, 09:58 AM
#12
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Location: Acton, MA (20 miles west of Boston) - GORGEOUS cycling territory!
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Bikes: 2007 Specialized Roubaix Elite Triple - 1st ride = century 9/19/2010 , Ultegra
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What a blast!
You are stark, raving, completely insane - and the world is a better place because of it.
Thanks for sharing your insanity in such detail.
PS - In case you don't know, there are several people doing equivalent work on gonzo cars. They redo all the mechanicals, but they don't touch the patina, sometimes including major parts of the interior. LINK
You are stark, raving, completely insane - and the world is a better place because of it.
Thanks for sharing your insanity in such detail.
PS - In case you don't know, there are several people doing equivalent work on gonzo cars. They redo all the mechanicals, but they don't touch the patina, sometimes including major parts of the interior. LINK
09-03-15, 10:02 AM
#13
Banned
How much money a month does it cost to live in SanFrancisco these days ?
and still have money left to obsess over Bicycles and parts ?
and still have money left to obsess over Bicycles and parts ?
09-17-15, 06:06 PM
#15
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Join Date: May 2015
Location: San Francisco, Ca
Posts: 28
Bikes: 1972 Raleigh Champion, 1973 Mercier 100
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To update at the two-plus-weeks point, after finally getting a little weather and putting in a proper afternoon ride, the only thing that's even slightly touched the finish were a couple of drops of diet Red Bull that splashed off the front fender. Little tiny spots of spray had rusted red overnight, but disappeared one wipe of a t-shirt without marring the blue. Which suggests I might save money on the browning solution and just use the Red Bull next time, since it even seems to cut right through the paste wax. 
Thanks for the kind words, @hobkirk, and that's a great link. Besides gunsmiths, definitely also ended up on lots of body shop sites, home decoration and even some art sculptor forums looking for patina tips.
As for maintaining both housing and a bike habit in San Francisco, the answers are rent control and volunteering at a bike co-op, respectively. My first restoration project was a family hand-me-down, this was a parts bin build-a-bike, and since my friends are starting to realize I'll happily take perfectly good rusty junk off their hands, the next is looking like a Kent-built Raleigh Technium that's been sitting on the dock of the bay, watching the tide roll away from a Sausalito houseboat.
Thanks for the kind words, @hobkirk, and that's a great link. Besides gunsmiths, definitely also ended up on lots of body shop sites, home decoration and even some art sculptor forums looking for patina tips.
As for maintaining both housing and a bike habit in San Francisco, the answers are rent control and volunteering at a bike co-op, respectively. My first restoration project was a family hand-me-down, this was a parts bin build-a-bike, and since my friends are starting to realize I'll happily take perfectly good rusty junk off their hands, the next is looking like a Kent-built Raleigh Technium that's been sitting on the dock of the bay, watching the tide roll away from a Sausalito houseboat.
09-18-15, 11:08 AM
#16
Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2015
Posts: 246
Bikes: 2015 Cannondale SuperSix EVO 105, 2012 Fuji Roubaix, 1988 Basso Gap
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Nicely done OP.
The cold bluing is easier than you would think though and you can get pretty good results. The finish is also very durable. It is also very easy to touch up if you do get any nicks or scratches. Just dip a qtip in the bluing solution, apply, wipe off excess, and done.
The cold bluing is easier than you would think though and you can get pretty good results. The finish is also very durable. It is also very easy to touch up if you do get any nicks or scratches. Just dip a qtip in the bluing solution, apply, wipe off excess, and done.
09-18-15, 11:18 AM
#17
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Join Date: May 2005
Location: La La Land (We love it!)
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Bikes: Gilmour road, Curtlo road; both steel (of course)
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Cold bluing works better if the metal is warm, BTW... 
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09-18-15, 12:50 PM
#19
Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2011
Location: Ellensburg,WA
Posts: 3,178
Bikes: Schwinn Broadway, Specialized Secteur Sport(crashed) Spec. Roubaix Sport, Spec. Crux
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Why bluing? if you ride it in the rain you will have to wipe dry and re-oil every time. Beyond that #rmfnla is right about cold blue. Try Brownell's cold blue, great stuff. Not sure they can ship to Kali though....... Cerrakote might be a better coating to use for this application.
Hot bluing is not that big of a deal if you have a local shop that does it. A fork would likely fit in a tank large enough for barrels. An alternative would be to ship your fork out to someone that has bluing tanks set up.
Hot bluing is not that big of a deal if you have a local shop that does it. A fork would likely fit in a tank large enough for barrels. An alternative would be to ship your fork out to someone that has bluing tanks set up.
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