Rust blue question: Did I screw it up?

[DeoreDX]

I'm building a Traditions Kentucky rifle kit. I originally planned on browning the barrel and leaving it a plum brown. After two days of browning I was left with a really nice plum brown barrel. I neutralized with baking soda and cleaned it off then followed it up with a second neutralization with Ammonia.

It fit the barrel up to my rifle and even though the plum brown looked nice when mated to my rifle I didn't like the color of the plum brown against the case hardened lock. I decided to boil it and turn the brown to black. I build a boiling tank out of rain gutter. Bought a couple of gallons of distilled water. Brought the water to a rolling boil on the stove. Poured it over the barrel while on a couple of camp stoves. I just want to add at this point I have not yet at any point oiled the barrel.

I checked back after about 15 minutes and it looked like there were still some spots not fully converted to black. Went futzing around the house came back after ~30-35 minutes of boiling and everything was a nice deep black. Pulled it out and it was covered in a layer of black soot. Carded like heck with old cut up blue jeans. I was pulling tons of black off the barrel. It got to the point where rubbing the barrel would no longer pull black off onto my jeans. All my gun oils are fancy high tech oils made for MSR's so instead of gun oil I broke out the 3 in 1 oil and flooded the surface. After a bit of Googling 3in1 oil was the first oil I found someone mentioned they used after rust bluing that I had in the house so that's how that was chosen. I used blue shop towels to rub it in and spread the oil around. The oil flooded surface was leaching a lot of black soot and the shop rags came away very black. I let it set up for a day.

I wiped down the still slightly damp with 3in1 oil surface down with shop rangs and they would still pull away black soot. After a couple of days everything seems to be OK. I set the sights and tenons in their dovetails. Went to flood the surface one last tipe and wipe it down before final assembly and the rags are coming away darker than ever. Did I screw something up in the process not boiling and carding after each "pass" instead of just a single boil at the end? Do I just need to stop rubbing it with oil cause I'm just rubbing all of the rust blue off? I'm not rubbing very hard, I'm just flooding the surface and wiping off the excess. The lighting gives is a reddish tint but the color is actually a deep black/blue.

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[cornbelt]

One thing I've noticed with rust bluing is that the more its boiled, the more it looks like and acts like rust. But a good carding will not only take off the loose oxide, but actually burnish as it goes. A carding wheel has real fine wire, but is fairly aggressive, as is fine steel wool. Usually it takes me another coat or two to get to the desired shade depending on how even and complete the first coat was.
Guessing of course, but you might have more loose oxide to come off. Steel wool ought to do it. Also you might want to use paste wax on a hot barrel as an alternative to oil. (And if you don't like wax, oil will take it off). Nothing wrong with 3 in one, though.

 

[ebell46]

In my experience with rust bluing I boiled and carded using a hand wire brush then fine steel wool to polish the metal after each application of the bluing solution until I reached the depth of color I was looking for. I think in the linked project I put around 25 coats on the barrel, stopping when I could no longer see a change, some other parts required more or less coats.

My recommendation would be to degrease the barrel throughly, card with a fine soft wire brush then check see how much black dust remains using a white cloth, I'm thinking by applying the oil before removing all the black oxide dust first you may have bedded some of the black into the fine pores of the medal.

*Edit*
P.S. I used a rain gutter and a BBQ grill as well.