The Armour Archive

Anyone ever do this before? I have a sword with brass fittings, and I'd like to change th elook of the weapon. Do you just yuse regular gun blue solution? Thanks.

Broðir

It is possible to change the color of brass (an almost infinite array of colors is possible actually), but "gun blue" may not give you the reaction you are looking for.

The unfortunate answer though is that brass (and any copper based alloy) requires a chemical reaction to be "colored". This is called "patina-ing" an object. If you have the proper chemicals (and in the proper ratios) you can pretty much make any color you want, green, blue, brown, red, grey, whatever. For specifics, I recommend "The Colouring, Bronzing, and Patination of Metals : A Manual for the Fine Metalworker and Sculptor" by Richard Hughes and Michael Rowe.

Now to help you out. The chemical I know you have easy access to, is one that will give you a result close to what you want. You can use "Gun blue" but use a pad of steel wool to apply it to the brass. That will give you a grayish-blueish black. But it won't be the kind of color that that you'd get if you were applying it to carbon steel.


Frederich

Thanks Frederich. If you scroll down this page a bit

http://www.gunaccessories.com/BirchwoodCasey/Blueing.asp

you will find a chemical blueing treatment for both aluminum and brass. I use an aluminum lamellar corselet, and might be interested in this stuff as well as the brass stuff. Any experiences? Anyone else?

Broðir

I used the aluminum black way back on some 6061 aluminum. It sucked. It left a rough finish and the color wasn't even. The stuff that was black, rubbed the black off onto whatever it touched.

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Krag von Berghen
KragAxe Armoury

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