AK Shooter came over to my house the other day. He had a gorgeous painted Arsenal AK whose paint had begun to chip, and he wanted to put a new stock on it, strip the paint, and blue it. Well. I figured it was ambitious, but we could do it in two days. We started off by riveting in the lower stock tang, so fit the new buttstock. Because it was a Yugo style milled buttstock we had a tough time getting the front rivet in place. I wound up having to make a riveting tool to do it, but we got it done.
Next we started sand-blasting. Did I say "We"? I guess I should say "He". It took that poor guy about two hours to blast the paint off, because we only had 70-grit media, when what we really needed was 60-grit. He did one pass with the 70-grit, then another with 80-grit, and we were ready to blue.
I heated up one tank of distilled water for the de-greasing, and another tank with the salts. They looked a bit chunkier than when I'd used them before, but I assumed they would smooth out OK. Well, the de-greasing went fine, but when we put the parts in the salts we had to run them up to 320 degrees to get them to boil, and I knew something was wrong. The solution was lots more distilled water which tends to explode when added to 320 degree ammonium nitrate bluing salts. It was ugly, but eventually the temperature came down. In the tank what was happening was the salts were applying a really heavy bluing to the metal.
When we took the parts out of the salts though to run them through the tank of boiling rinse water, they began immediately to rust - a lot. We had to use steel wool and a carding brush to get it off - the gas cylinder. We decided that the trick was going to be bead blasting from a distance in order to get the rust off. He had to take the rifle home rusted. I felt really bad.
Well it turns out the bead blasting worked like a charm. Here's the result:
I'll say this: The milled Arsenal AK is a beautiful piece of work.
Next we started sand-blasting. Did I say "We"? I guess I should say "He". It took that poor guy about two hours to blast the paint off, because we only had 70-grit media, when what we really needed was 60-grit. He did one pass with the 70-grit, then another with 80-grit, and we were ready to blue.
I heated up one tank of distilled water for the de-greasing, and another tank with the salts. They looked a bit chunkier than when I'd used them before, but I assumed they would smooth out OK. Well, the de-greasing went fine, but when we put the parts in the salts we had to run them up to 320 degrees to get them to boil, and I knew something was wrong. The solution was lots more distilled water which tends to explode when added to 320 degree ammonium nitrate bluing salts. It was ugly, but eventually the temperature came down. In the tank what was happening was the salts were applying a really heavy bluing to the metal.
When we took the parts out of the salts though to run them through the tank of boiling rinse water, they began immediately to rust - a lot. We had to use steel wool and a carding brush to get it off - the gas cylinder. We decided that the trick was going to be bead blasting from a distance in order to get the rust off. He had to take the rifle home rusted. I felt really bad.
Well it turns out the bead blasting worked like a charm. Here's the result:
I'll say this: The milled Arsenal AK is a beautiful piece of work.
