So I got busy today and forgot to call and figure this stuff out. In the mean time, this stuff has not made me happy.
As everyone knows, the stuff entered a tiny cut and burned my fingers internally for a couple days. There is only one small spot left that is still hurting , and only intermittently, but everywhere effected is still sore and stiff and slightly discolored under the skin.
So the reason I was using the stuff was because I had done a fake case coloring to a shotgun. This one was really a pain in the neck. The metal was different than I was used to and it took a lot of painstaking work to get even close to the effect I was looking for, and even so, I did not really get the patterns I wanted, but it worked out ok in the end. It took maybe four hours, though, for something that should have taken 30 minutes - it was a lot of work. When I was done, it was dry, of course, and it needs to be saturated with oil and left for the colors to set. I used this oil. I wish I had not.
So today I went to assemble the shotgun. I was horrified. The thing had turned almost black, though internal areas that were not polished and had been left in the white had turned gold. (Not real gold, I could have handled that, but a gold color.) I had left Polished areas that had been left silver turned anything from goldish to brown to almost black. Anything with any color had turned very dark. The patterns were almost indistinguishable.
To say I was frustrated would be the understatement of the year.
So I wiped off the oil (wearing gloves
) and you know how you can wipe off heavy oil and there is a film left? Not with this stuff - it wiped off dry and all that was left was a layer of fine surface rust under the oil. A few areas were very slightly pitted, so slightly that it would be similar to the etching that some techniques use for a french grey, not really something that could be felt, and requires very close examination to see. This did not bother me, but the colors being darkened and all the work wasted sure did.By the time I got all the oil off, my wife was back with a new bottle of CLP and I began oiling the metal with CLP. The rag came away black. I did not get any color of with the other oil, except for a little rust color, but The CLP took something black out of the surface of the metal, with a greenish tint. A lot of rubbing with CLP brought the patterns out again, but the colors remained muted - the brighter blues and reds and yellows remained dull. The patterns are not as pronounced as they were originally. Also, some internal areas had enough surface rust that they remained rust colored.
So what is this stuff and what caused all this weird stuff? Is it really the urine of Cerberus? Did it react with residual chemicals? The only chemical that I used that had an acid was bluing remover, but it was cleaned with solvent, water, and alcohol afterward. The cold blue has ingredients that can form acid in contact with water, from what I understand. So maybe there were some residual chemicals it reacted with, or maybe it is something in the oil itself, I don't know. I have just never used anything that reacted this way.
I remember this stuff really stinging in a scratch when I used it years ago.
Unexpected results is why I am always slow to change lubricants and never really jump on the coolest new lube bandwagon until I see the results others are getting, and even then I like to stick with the older stuff.
I'll post photos maybe tomorrow.
