WHEW! I was finally able to finish up this long outstanding project this weekend.
What was the hold-up? The bluing (and real life interruptions, of course). I tried all the Birchwood Casey products (Perma Blue, Super Blue, Aluminum Black, even Brass Black, since zinc is apparently a component in brass). As you can see above, each time I thought everything was going to turn out fine...but when the bluing dried and cured, almost every separate piece was a different color. The upper part of the Mauser and some of the smaller parts always came out different shades of brown metallic, while other pieces such as the lower part of the Mauser either looked just right or had a definite blue tint. Sometimes parts were a streaky mix of brown and blue. If all the parts were the same color (whatever that color was), I would have been happy to call it a day, but I hated how everything looked when it was all put together and it was clear that no two parts were the same color. My best guess for why this was happening is that the zinc MR used was a slightly different alloy for each part. I don't know enough about metals to make a better guess, but that's the only reason I could come up with that would explain why the results were consistent in their variation no matter what Birchwood Casey darkening agent I used. So, out of frustration, I put the project on a shelf for a while and did some research.
Ultimately, I found a product called Blue Wonder Gun Blue online. It was supposed to work a little differently than the Birchwood Casey chemicals and since I had tried nearly everything else, I decided to take a chance. So after stripping everything down to the bare metal again, I gave the Blue Wonder a try and it worked almost flawlessly, giving me an even consistent color over all the parts that looks extremely close to a real Mauser's metallic gray finish. Here are the results:
I did say
almost flawlessly, though: while I got consistency, I couldn't really control the lightness/darkness of the color. I really wanted to match the lighter almost bare steel color of the real thing on the slide, hammer and a couple of other parts but the Blue Wonder was very streaky and spotty until unless I went pretty dark with it. Anyway, below are some more photos of the finished reassembled piece. Here's a summary of everything that went into this:
- Disassembled the stock Master Replicas DL44
- Stripped of all gloss black paint on body and black spray on barrel
- Re-weathered barrel using BC Aluminum Black strategically removed in places using metal polish
- Replaced painted plastic MR grips w/real wood C96 grips along with new brass escutcheons and new blued steel grip screw
- Replaced MR scope & bolts w/real vintage M19 scope and vintage scope bolts
- Replaced numberless/non-functional MR sight real working C96 sight parts (after modifying upper part of Mauser body to accept a real sight)
- Replaced MR scope bracket knob assembly with a custom made aluminum threaded knob and threaded steel rod
- Blued Mauser body and parts
