After re-bluing one of my guns, I thought if bluing would work on uni’s. It does. I have some pics of cranks I did. It’s hard to tell, but they look real good. Really rich, shiny black. I didn’t do them real black. they are kinda black tinted. It looks much better in real, than the pics. If you have some extra cash, and want some nice looking black or slightly black cranks(or any other metal parts), then get some of this. I think my bottle of bluing was like $12, so pretty cheap. Im gonna have to see how it holds up over time.
All you do is…
clean the surface you wanna blue
put bluing on cotton swab, and swab your piece down
give it atleast 30 seconds, then rinse with cool water, dry
get steel wool, and “buff” the bluing to perfection.
You just add more bluing if you want it darker.
1st picture is the cranks before. They are stripped down to bare shiny metal. Wich I also like.
2nd pic is the stuff you need. I just had my gun bluing, gloves(your not supposed to get the bluing on you, or you will get cancer and die), steel wool, and cotton swabs.
The rest of the pics are just the finished products.
woah thats look awesome. I really good idea to do is do that to the kh frame hub and cranks! All you would need to do before bluing is strip paint off frame.
More durable than paint. It doesnt scratch off as easily. Its like one with the metal, not just covering up the metal like paint does. Id think that it would last longer than paint.
bluing is a chemical process that actually oxidizes the steel forming the black oxide magnetite (Fe3O4) the bluing solution is usually clear and it is the iron in the steel which actually turns black.
looks good musketman, just keep them oiled and they will be shinny for quite a while!
That looks really cool musketman, presumably you blue guns to stop corrosion so it will protect your cranks too?
Slight threadjack, has any tried oil blacking uni components? This is where you heat up an object till it glows red, then drop it in a bucket of oil which burns to the surface (read up on it if you want to do it, it’s extremley dangerous if you do it wrong). It just came to mind because like blueing the coating is kindof part of the metal, you can’t scratch it off. I used to use it when I had to make custom cotter pins for my uni and it held up really well, might be good for cranks etc.
Years ago in school we used to call this oil bluing anyhow, and IIRC the finish was very similar to that of musketman’s cranks.
The main difficulty was in getting the finish even: unevenly heated metal, and any fingerprints, would easily show up.
I think a uni frame treated this way would look awesome, but I’d have thought it’d be fairly hazardous to treat an object the size of a uni frame… I wonder if there are any commercial services that will do the treament for you in a controlled environment… I should investigate!
Yeah, the blueing is made to put on guns after the original blueing has worn off,and the gun is down to bare metal. You put the blueing on to re protect it. So it should work the same way for my cranks.
I used cold bluing, so I didn’t have to heat up anything. You just rub it on and buff it. But there is other types of blueing you put on after heating the metal, kinda like that Oil Blackening thing.
Uni Rider 13, the blueing comes clear blue out of the bottle, but like saskatuwanian said, once it hits the metal it turns black. You just add more coats if you want it darker, or thicker.
And No, this type of blueing doesn’t work on aluminum, but other(more expensive) types do.
Im not sure if it would work on spokes. If they are stainless steel I dont know if it would take. The stainless part would probably not let the blueing on. But I dont really know. I had my cranks down to bare metal when I blued them.
