Henry Rifle Forums

It's easy to find things to wonder about when you are a little ignorant .( I wonder about a lot of stuff)
I was looking at a beautifully engraved shotgun in a picture and I wondered...where they carve out those beautiful designs... what do ya do to keep those areas of basically bare steel, from rusting with amazing ease????

Anything but stainless - in other words standard gun steel - has to be either blued or plated as in chromed, nitrided, nickeled, case hardening or chemically finished, such as coin finish or various types chemical case hardening. Moist of those classic shotguns with engraving that are not blued used chemical finishes. As you mention, bare gun steel will rust in a hurry.

Here's my engraved Uberti 1873 with coin finish.

I stripped my rifle down and aged it. I keep it oiled or it'll rust. So far so good but it's only been a few months if that.

Kissmybrass wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 29, 2021 11:20 pm

I stripped my rifle down and aged it. I keep it oiled or it'll rust. So far so good but it's only been a few months if that.



IMG-3899.jpg

I really like the aged look. Well done.

Oil 'em and use 'em. Patina rocks.

What is a coin finish?

The original coin finish is case-hardened steel that has been polished to a high luster, thereby losing most of the color, but the hardening is still there to prevent rust. It's been around a long time, but it is very labor intensive. There are now coin finishes that use other chemical methods to harden the steel before polishing that are much more affordable, but the key is the hardening of the steel one way or another, before polishing. The hardening is the step that makes the steel rust resistant.

Sir Henry wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 30, 2021 8:52 pm

Kissmybrass wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 29, 2021 11:20 pm

I stripped my rifle down and aged it. I keep it oiled or it'll rust. So far so good but it's only been a few months if that.



IMG-3899.jpg

I really like the aged look. Well done.

Thanks!

I think the post ran a little off track from my orginal question but it was all good information anyway.....