black paint

[Jim Filipski]

While I do acknowledge the popularity of various shellacs from ca. 1800 onwards, and especially in relation to stringed musical instruments, I have a very hard time accepting it's use upon a rifle.  I've experimented with a LOT of shellac mixtures - blonde, amber, brown, button, seed, waxed, dewaxed etc.  While it is perfect for use as a grain sealer/filler under oil or oil varnishes, as a stand-alone coating it will go milky white, soft and sticky in the first rainstorm.  Not very appealing.  I can't see it lasting more than a year or two as a rifle finish - if that long - under constant use.

Eric , I second that
Jim

[Majorjoel]

I have a longrifle that spent many decades ?? in the rafters of a barn. The BRASS furniture has a coating of what appears to be black paint. I see from most of the previous posts that such a coating was mostly found on iron and steel furniture. I do not have a clue what this "paint" is composed of or why it was applyed. All I can say is it sure messes up the desired patina I like to see on aged metal. Instead of scrapeing this stuff off and ending up with a polished look, I have just opted to leave the paint as it is.

[Eric Kettenburg]

Linseed oil alone, if boiled with lead, will go black over many years.  Usually it's a somewhat translucent black, but very black nevertheless.  If it accumulates dirt, dust and who knows what else in multiple layers it will be relatively opaque - 'paint.'  I've seen enough old Winchesters covered in what looks like dried black coffee to know that frequently if a gun was rubbed down with oil, it ALL was oiled - barrel, buttplate, all of it.  If someone wiped a gun down with leaded linseed oil and stuck it up in the rafters for a hundred years, between the lead and the oil (which in and of itself will darken quite a lot) and the heat and the dust, you'd end up with black paint.   

[Dphariss]

Remember paint at the time was generally linseed oil with pigment.
Painting the whole gun would be a way to preserve it and very well could have been done buy the owner rather than the maker.

According to the Madis' Winchester book at one time Winchester blued barrels by putting the part in heated potassium nitrate with some maganese dioxide(?) till they turned blue.
The parts were then coated with oil and heated till the oil smoked off to darken and make the color more durable.

Dan

[mr. no gold]

A nice little Moll 'factory rifle' turned up in a pawn shop in a neighboring town. It was painted black, too, over a walnut stock. Gun is in very good condition.  The fellow that bought it promptly took the black off to reveal the original finish. It is still too bad that he did it, as it is now up on my wall. Should I get out the spray can of Rustoleum?
Black is apparently not the only color used. There is a superfine Bonawitz rifle that is painted red and other 'red' guns have been reported. One collector theorized that the red guns were preferred by the Indians. There is pictoral evidence that they did paint their guns (with designs at least). The epic painting of 'The Death of Wolfe' at Quebec illustrates this.
Dick

[LynnC]

I wonder if these guns were "blacked" or heavily linseed oiled to weatherproof them.  I doubt these southern guns were ever dismounted for cleaning except maybe to oil the lock inards once in a while.  Perhaps this black coating is to seal out the wet from getting between the barrel and the stock.

Just a thought................................Lynn

[Rich]

In Foxfire 5 page 220, a quote attributed to Jim Moran (I have no idea who he is) states: "But the early ones were simple, and coated with a mixture of carbonblack and varnish or linseed oil so that you would et no glint off the wood-no reflection from it. ...The finish was often applied to the entire rifle."