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Back to the original question... I have refinished a number of old guns. The best way I've found to remove old bluing is Muratic acid. It works very quickly. Wash the acid off as soon as the blue is removed using cold water. In each of my refinish jobs, I've reblued the gun using a 19 th century rust blue process. It is slow but the results are very nice.

Remember - bluing is a form of oxidation on the metal that protects the metal from rust. The bluing essentially per-rusts the metal forming an oxidation barrier.