[fng13]

I recently did a rust blue to an Armi Galesi pistol that my grandfather picked up somewhere.

I will say that it is pretty time consuming (mostly waiting and repeating the rusting process) however the results were pretty satisfactory. It also costs very little, and was the way barrels were done before hot bluing came about.

You also have a tremendous amount of control on how dark you want the bluing.

Doing the barrel that way might be a challenge unless you have a large container to boil the barrel in between rusting.

If you do go this route get as much humidity around the rusting pieces as possible. I didn't initially get enough humidity in my "sweat box" and the process took that many more repetitions.