I have a used shotgun I would like to try for my first gun engraving. Is it necessary to remove the blueing before I try to engrave a firearm, and if so, how? Also, There are some pretty good scratches on the side plate. is there a way to either remove them or minimize them?

John Saville
10/13/2006 6:19:25 PM

Oh John, I thought I taught you better than that! Were you sleeping that day in class?
:) Seriously...
Yes, the blue must come off. You have to knock off any burrs when you engrave and there is no way to do that without ruining the blue. I'm afraid there is no short cut for the scratches either. You just need to sand everything smooth before you start. A scratch usually looks worse AFTER you engrave then it does before. Just use a sanding block and start with something like a 150 grit and work your way up to a 400 or 600.

Rex Pedersen
10/13/2006 7:55:28 PM

Rex,
Thanks. I think I was only half awake, and probably too busy scratching the daylights out of a practice plate. I remember hearing it but wasn't sure if it was because of scratching it or another reason, like hardness or something. What do you think of the solutions they sell at brownells for rust and blue remover? After I Sand it, do I need to do anything to protect the metal? How about after it is engraved?

John Saville
10/14/2006 8:23:57 AM

Brownell's or Birchwood Casey blue removers works fine. Even Naval jelly works. You don't need to do much with the metal other than light oil while engraving but you need to put some sort of finish on after engraving. Blue, plating, French Gray, whatever....
You can keep it bare metal but you need to keep it well oiled and protected.

Rex Pedersen
10/14/2006 9:18:28 AM

You can also use Lysol Toilet Bowl Cleaner to remove the blue. It also works good to remove case colors from an engraved game scene.

Martin Rabeno
10/14/2006 9:34:07 AM

Hi John

I’m not sure about your action but I’ll tell you how I went about doing my first one (which I’m still working on) Your in for a steep, but fun, learning curve. 20% about what to do properly and 80% about what not to do ever again!!

My hammer gun action already had some engraving on it so I took it to a polisher to get all the initial polishing done. This of course rounded out holes and edges which wasn’t flash but because the woodwork and barrel are knackered I figured that it wouldn’t matter as it is a practice piece.

Then I finished it with some small diamond files, stones and wet n dry automotive sand paper finishing with 600 grit. Then into the engraving. Trouble was what I didn’t realise was that the action was case hardened and the graver wouldn’t even scratch the surface!!!! So one choice was to go hard with sandpaper and stones to remove it, or anneal the action by heating it up to bright red and letting it cool off. I did the latter because it was naturally easier and that had a lot of appeal by this stage. I took it to the welder next door that did that for me. Unbeknown to me there is heating and then there is heating!!!!!!!!!! He heated the initial parts up too fast and a lot of pitting came up in the steel where there were imperfections in it (or something like that) The smaller parts he heat treated a lot slower and gentler so there was less pitting.

So back to the polisher it all went to remove all the fire scale and again at that stage I didn’t know that you could dunk it in “pickling solution” to soften the fire scale first!!! Anyway it all comes back, so more filing and sanding with more rounding off of the edges and holes etc. By this stage I found that the odd swear word helped immensely!!

In the end I had to look at it and say that if I wanted any metal left to engrave then that’s as good as it’s going to get with my skills (or lack of them). The parts still had the odd deep small scratches and heat pitting and small marks where the old engraving was but I figured a lot of these will be disguised by my engraving. Some are and others aren’t but I’ve learned to live with them. Not a clever thought on hind sight!!! (sigh)

Looking back on it the surface preparation is everything. You’ll spend a lot of hours engraving it and to have a scratch right through it, no matter how small is just plain out annoying. But on the other hand it is a practice piece and your first one.

Good luck on your new adventure, you’re going to enjoy the challenges along the way and I’d love to see some progress photos as you go

Best regards
Andrew Biggs


Andrew Biggs
10/14/2006 7:22:57 PM