Cold blue Brownell's -vs- Precision brand

[Music] hey guys welcome to bar Z my name is Stan and today we're gonna do a little bit of gun bluing and I've got something new I want to try this is my old standby this is by precision brand and it's the tool black gel and I wanted to try something new and I've seen a lot of guys using the Brownells aqua blue it's a firearms reblooming and it's for reblooming and for the new work so they both have very similar directions I'm very used to my precision brand we're gonna go ahead to head I've got three pair of squares here maybe we'll do one pair and one and another parent and in my old standby it's all the same tool steel it's all been hardened the same way in the same batch it's been tempered the same way in the same batch like I say let's just go head-to-head and see where it goes these have been cleaned soaked in purple power in warm water and cleaned down with 800 grit sandpaper to slightly scuffed them off on all the non measuring surfaces so they are all the web's are clean and everything else was just wiped down and got all in degrees so let's let's get the tool black going I already know what this stuff does so let's do my let's do the big pair here we'll use this for the tool black and this is kind of thick it's like a gel type product a little thinner than naval jelly but I'm completely used to it so let's put that to the side let's put this to the side and grab a swab and go to town here and I just kind of vigorously rub this stuff in and it works almost instantly on the on the tool steel you can see the color change there so it's it's pretty instant and when all you do is wet the surface and let it sit and don't let it dry out and that's the that's the name of the game for this stuff you'll be interesting to see with that other stuff how it reacts the only difference in the in the Brownells is they say that after you've done your first coat come back to some double aught steel wool and let it dry burnish it with double-aught steel wool which is actually going to cut into the surface a little bit and then reapply it so it'll be interesting to see how that that works I've actually tried that I've scrubbed the the precision brand in with the double aa steel wool you soak a steel wool pad in the formula and then to kind of scrub it in and all we do it looking to do is wet the surface and then let it sit and pick off for a little while and I just kind of dab it on just make sure those the surface is wetted and it stays wetted for some time and doing this dabbing it's gonna give it kind of a looks like a color case hardening effect kind of blotchy but that's what we're doing there all right let's set that turkey to the side and then grab a freshie and being thorough no stone unturned and now we just dab it on don't let it get drugs I want to dry out I usually let these sit about 20 minutes before I rinse them off that's what I'm used to with this stuff so all right let's set that one to the side no one's a pickled and set this to the side we will wash up and then we'll crack up in the Brownells and do the other pair okay welcome back and we're gonna do those 60 30s there get a fresh cup shake this stuff up just for good measure and I've already cracked the seal on it and this is a very deep blue lot darker than the precision brand so we're just couldn't uh and it's been my experience that you don't ever want to wow this is really thick you don't ever want to dip into your main bucket and contaminate this little flakes of magnetite or whatever is coming off of the steel the black is kind of a powdered metal it gets in the main the main container and it overrun the whole thing it changes color and everything else okay this is a pretty thick formula here let's just wipe it on and kind of pickle it let's take a look at how fast it works it's pretty instant you can see them more of a brown forming there so that's pretty interesting let's just get this thing pickled get it down on all the grooves everything here on these things now when I'm when I am cleaning what I'm going for I go for a kind of a brushed look I don't really go for a full-on polish I've had customers that have ordered polished squares before and I have polish them in the past but I for buy general purpose I like the I like a brushed look with it with a with a gun blue on it appears to be working very quickly look at that alright let's give this other side I sure like the consistency of the Browning or the Brownells it's nice and thick it really clings to the parts and make sure we're all coated on all surfaces they give you extra strong warning on the bottle to about eye protection make sure you wear eye protection you've this stuff in your eyes it's no joke same thing with the other brand two hand protection it'll burn your skin and it's no fun on the eyes let's do our other one here I'm just gonna mop it around with my little mini mom yeah maybe we'll just do one coat and see what it looks like and then didn't try the steel wool trick I've tried the steel like I said I tried the steel wool with the precision brand really didn't see any difference with the tool black gel all right done it's really pulling up some really deep blues there the base of this stuff I think they call it a like a mineral acid and the blue is some type of mineral which causes the chemical reaction with the steel but I thought this would be a good head-to-head because we've got identical Steel's the harder the steel is the the more difficult it is to take a gun blue and these are both everything here is hardened to high 50s I shoot between 58 and 60 on the squares and I'm hitting and I check them with my heart I spot checking on my hardness gesture that is wetted shake this other side looks good kind of digging this gel all right two pairs of squares let's let them sit and pickle I'll bring you back okay it's been a about 10 or 15 minutes and all I'm doing is I've got some double-aught steel wool I'm just kind of rubbing in the gun blew in and slightly drying and this is gonna kind of even them up as far as the color ink should and it'll take out some of the modeling you're getting let's take a look at one that's just been so convinced oh 'king then I'll just give it a light brush and you can see some of the patchiness there and doing the steel wool with the kind of rubbing it in actually it's gonna take some of that away so we're just kind of rubbing in the the Brownells let's see there you can see some of the patchiness there before I steel wool it and we're just gonna kind of rub that around try to even up these surfaces and then they say dry and reapply so we're gonna do we're gonna follow their directions to the letter I still got my precision brand according to their directions just sitting and I'm not letting them get dried out there's still everything's still nice and wedded over there I'm gonna grab a lint-free and we'll dry these up okay lint-free kimwipe oops let's get these uh kind of wiped down and we'll get some fresh gun bloom on them gotta save them with the first coat you don't look too bad pretty good so let's reapply just give them another slathering of this material and like I say I was when I was uh when I was cleaning I was using a very warm tap water so I I kind of brought the temperature of these things up a little bit which I found does help especially on a cold day if your parts are very cold you want to kind of bring them up to temperature and you just use hot tap water and that'll bring them up to improve your results all right let's let that sit and that's a picnic and let's wipe this little fellow down yeah it looks pretty good it's one coat of the Brownells hmm little browner than the other one then what I'm used to seeing but let's get some more of this stuff going here sure you gun guys out there just going oh man I've seen this a million times I have it this is the first time I've ever used this so I thought it'd be interesting to do head to head I'm almost out of stuff a little shot of that okay yeah looks like a second coats actually working in my experience the tool black was absolutely no good on a second coat I don't see any difference in the second coat if you don't get it the first time it doesn't happen it's touchdown when out looks like it's drying out the other side right now here Jim and by now we're ready to take our precision brand into a rinse it it just rinse it in cold water and I use a paintbrush just to scrub all the all the nooks and crannies of grooves in there and then get them all cleaned out so they're ready these guys are ready to go over for rinse you can see they're still wetted it's just it the way this stuff works it just kind of you blob it on there and then it just kind of cascades down and keeps a surface wetted so I think these are ready for a water rinse let me go rinse those what I do with those is I rinse them blow air dry them and then I them immediately and then I just let them sit you know they'll continue to get black below the oil the oil pickles them and does allow any oxygen in and there's still the reaction is still happening below the oil so I'm gonna go rinse those and then we're going to come back to the Brownells okay well I'm back from the sink we took both of them and washed them with clean water and we brushed them down with a paintbrush and got all the acid off of there and then we compressed air bloom dry and this is these are my results this is the precision brand kind of a brown this is the this is the Brownells a a little more blue and this has a more even color which I attribute to the burnishing with the double lot steel wool now I've tried the burnishing with the precision brand and it doesn't work all it does is wipe everything off so these are gonna sit for 24 hours pickled in oil they were they were rinsed very lightly and gently brushed you've got loose I believe it's magnetite coming to the top you've got loose powdered metal coming to the top and if you if you wipe it vigorously you will wipe it off and it actually takes a set over a at time okay well I hope you guys enjoyed this brownells aux Folles blue and precision brand tool black head-to-head thanks for watching ok here's a quick recap this is straight off the grinder so this is what we started with and here's what we ended up with so those are the here's the result of the harden a1 tool steel with the Oxford with the Oxbow blue by brownells bought it on Amazon reasonably inexpensive four ounces it was like twenty bucks but pretty good results I'm pretty happy with that actually a slightly better results than the tool black from precision brand so I might be switching brands here pretty quick okay here we are on a final recap and just for the heck of it I dug out some that I glued about two weeks ago with the precision brand that's these right here use the ones I just did with the Brownells and here's some of just how they come off the grinder so I'll hold each in front of the camera and let you take a look at them these are a little streaky which which has always given me trouble with the with the precision brand because I'm unable to use it with steel wool and I'll tip it so hopefully it catches the light for you and I'll get this pair out and now these are much much better there's oil on it so they're just grabbing dust and stuff but these are a lot less streaky it's got more blue to it and I'm sure that blacks going to deep enough that they've only been pickled they're in oil for about a half an hour so that's the Brownells and I'll show you the fresh off the grinder it's just a ball grind that's all right so they go from this bright to this black in pretty short amount of time not a whole lot of effort involved it should be noted that this is not a coating or a paint or anything like that this actually treats the metal if you'd like to think of it as a controlled oxidation you're actually corroding the metal in a controlled fashion so you know I choose this because it's cold and it doesn't you know I don't have to heat the parts up or take a chance of warping these these are very thin there's not much to these so uh I'm always worried about screwing up all my work by heating them up so I choose a cold blue - to treat them all right but that's the difference between the precision brand and the Brownells thanks for watching you guys [Music]

Channel: Shadon HKW

Views: 31,644

Rating: 4.9317212 out of 5

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Id: jd7zC1mvquY

Length: 20min 48sec (1248 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 22 2017