Home bluing / cold-blue?

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Advice sought - (tried the search but came up short)...

I've decided that my father-in-laws early 50's Winchester 69a deserves a bit of clean up. It wasn't cared for particularly well (we found it in an attic crawlspace after who knows how many decades). when we found it, it had a broken front sight which I've since replaced, however the barrel has a lot of tiny pitting, loss of finish, and the last 3 inches or so of the barrel are completely bare and has some worse rust pitting and some dings that would need to be filed & polished out.

Receiver is not as bad but worn..

it's the plain 69a model.. not Target or Match Target, open iron sights, no sling, etc. Basically the cheapest "adult" sized one you could get in the day.

It's not monetarily worth a $200-$300 professional hot blue job, so I'm wondering if anyone here has ever attempted an entire barrel & receiver with a "home blue" kit? and which did you have good results with?

I'm already set up at home for electrolysis rust-removal and I've done simple metal plating with a Caswell Plating kit.. so hopefully this isn't too far out of the box for my skill set.

Any thoughts from the peanut gallery? Even if it's "suck it up and have done professionally for your heirloom?"

Thanks!
Brian in StL

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Re: Home bluing / cold-blue?

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I cold blued my first SKS, and it turned out pretty good. The bluing doesn't really match between the receiver cover and the receiver however as I used the Bluing Remover on the receiver and the cover was bead blasted, but you shouldn't have that issue.
The barrel, magazine, and gas tube were just cleaned with acetone and reblued, and they came out nice.
This was with the Birchwood Casey Super Blue kit.

Where I started:

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The result:

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