How do you fire blue or heat blue a knife ?

[Edd Harbin]

Ihave a Ontario bagwell midnight that I have removed the black coating , reshaped the handle and replaced the pins in the handle . I would like to fire blue the blade , just wondering how it is done ?

 

[mete]

Heat bluing requires heating to 500-600 F. I'm not familiar with the knife but if the original tempering tempurature is 400 F you have a problem. Second problem , the handle would probably not take the heat. The knife should be polished to the degree you want, cleaned , degreased. Heat in oven to get desired color ,the higher the tempurature in that range the deeper the blue. You could do it with a torch but you shouldn't expect uniform color.

 

[Mike Hull]

The temperature required to do that(700+ degrees F) would effectively ruin the temper in the blade.

Try cold blue on the blade. There are two good ones that don't leave the nasty smell. Here's one of them.
http://www.novumsolutions.com/GunBlue.html