Last month (which was a post or two back) I showed a dismal failure at bluing. This was my go to, hard earned, very pricey shit that was supposed to last me the rest of what's left of my life.
It just looked like hell.

Now I also have a bottle of Jeff Fultz' stuff which I have never tried.
But a brother in Oregon, Royce Stearns, an accomplished fly tier and rod maker, sent me a bottle of LeClair's Payne solution.
Well...it wasn't. It's the solution he uses and sells to blacken piano wire that one would use to make home made snake guides. It's what he offers if you bought his "Snake Maker"
I thought I would try it anyway...

The first try was dismal.
I tried it on a plug of nickel-silver.
The first try was just hopeless. I mean, the metal only darkened where the solution was applied quite heavily and only where it beaded up on the metal.

So...I sipped me beer and went through the stages of total rejection to "maybe if I did this."
So realizing that the NS I was trying to oxidize was raw, unpolished, prolly oil coated, metal, I decided to try and polish it out a bit, clean thoroughly, allow the solvent to totally evaporate and try it again...
This happened!

Now there's a lot more prep to make that color happen, and it isn't even really supposed to happen with this metal but I got it to work.
The jury's still out if I will actually use this on a customer's rod, but it's promising.