bluing stainless

[Sir Thorfinn]

In another thread, someone mentioned bluing stainless.
can anyone point me to a commercial product that does this?

Or can stainless be heat blued with wd-40?

Any ideas?
the only thing I have ever seen that works is the powdercoat I hqave seen on some pieces...

Thanks in advance!

Thorfinn

[Sean Powell]

To the best of my knowledge, Bluing, which is an oxidization process, does not work on stainless because the chromium can not easily be encouraged to form different compositions when oxidizing. The best you can do with heat is to lay a layer of carbon on it which will A) look like shite B) scrape off and C) modify the outermost layer so that it CAN rust...

All said, not a good choice.

You can however get a nice color/texture change with a heavy bead-blast.

Good luck,
Sean

[Minotaur]

I think caswell sells something that works on stainless. Might want to check it out.

[Sir Thorfinn]

Ok, I found this at Caswell...

http://www.caswellplating.com/kits/black.htm#stainless

I wonder how it looks on a helm?

Or even elbows...

[Mike England]

Kaliban heat treated his SS armor to a golden color. I believe he could get it to blue by raising it to a higher temp he just liked the gold color better.

[Raeven]

I think it can be heat treated to blue. I know that when I'm grinding stainless (or mild after I've just torch cut it...i.e. it's preheated) I can get a nice deep blue color to tint the metal. You'll have to experiment for the necessary temp.

Rae

[Kaliban]

I used to have a color chart for the different colors of stainless and thier temps .. also the type of stainless used has quite a bit to do with it .. ran into that while working as a heat treater ..

this is my helmet .. its about 6 yrs old now and the color isnt as ric as it used to be ..