Brownell Formula 44/40 Instant Gun Blue

This product flat works. Best I've found.

Excellent. I used it to age some brass on a flintlock rifle and it worked perfectly.

This is a good product for small touch ups…not good for larger areas in my experience. I build 1911 pistols as a hobby and find this works well for areas I’ve filed to fit. For larger areas the Creme version is much preferred.

This stuff reacts instantly and is very forgiving. I use alcohol or mineral spirits to prep metal surfaces on my blacksmithing projects and get great results from this. You don’t have to do multiple coats either to get good finishes. 1 bottle lasts a while and be sure to change your application instrument (swab or cotton ball) after each use or you can contaminate the fluid.

Good stuff

First Time trying the Brownells blue and it works well

👍

I'm a gunsmith, and use Brownell's products often. I heard and read about 44/40 and thought to try it on my own shotgun. I typically only cold blue when either the customer is looking to save a little money, it's not a large surface area, the blued steel isn't being handled or there will not be a lot of wear. I stay away from cold bluing pistol frames and slides because it wears off very quickly. Anyway, the first application of using 44/40 I was very impressed with how quickly it worked and how black the part appeared to be. This was done on a Mossberg 500 20 gauge magazine tube and field barrel. However my first impression changed once the part was rinsed and oil was applied to set the finish. The barrel needed to be completely stripped again, it looked horrible. However I had thought the magazine tube would be OK at that time. I was wrong, that needs to be stripped again and refinished. It went from a solid black to a blotchy gray with a lot of weird patches of dark/gray areas. It reminded me of using Super Blue by Birchwood/Casey. Stick with either Oxpho-Blue or Van's for cold bluing. I re-blued the barrel using oxpho-blue and it came out perfect.