Can Blued Steel be Laser Engraved?

[Scott Balboa]

Hello everyone...

Blued Steel, for those of you who do not know, it is the black "coating" you see common on firearms on the metallic parts, like the slide. I have a handgun I'd love to engrave (on the slide) and am hoping the laser can burn through the blued layer and expose the silvery steel underneath, cleanly of course. For obvious reasons I don't want to experiment on my firearm unless I'm pretty sure it's gonna work!

Has anyone tried this? And if you have, or do it routinely, I'd love a ballpark for what settings to use! My laser is a ULS 40w.

Hoping someone out there has tried this!

[Gary Hair]

Scott,
I have done a few blued firearms and the results are very nice. You won't reveal the silver with a laser, maybe with a rotary engraver. I used cermark and got a nice brownish/tan colored mark. The results varied with each piece and I have a feeling that was due to the particular process used for each piece as well as the strength of the chemicals they used. I don't know enough about the bluing process to know what made them different, I'm just guessing.

Test it out on a hidden part, I tested the inside of the slide on a 45 auto to see how it would look.

Gary

[Lee DeRaud]

I have done a few blued firearms and the results are very nice. You won't reveal the silver with a laser, maybe with a rotary engraver.

Test it out on a hidden part, I tested the inside of the slide on a 45 auto to see how it would look.+1. The blueing process is a liquid bath sort of thing, so the inside of the slide (or the barrel on a semiauto) will be roughly the same as the outside, just not polished as well.

As Gary said, you won't reveal the steel surface unless your laser is strong enough to etch the metal itself, since the blueing is a chemical process. And if you do reveal the surface, it will eventually rust there anyway, so it's a bad idea.

And we're both assuming you're really talking about blueing on steel, as opposed to parkerizing or odd anodizing/coatings on alloy slides or that phosphate stuff that Glock uses (which engraves very nicely BTW).

[Scott Balboa]

Good points, both of you. I will test engrave inside and see what happens. I didn't stop to think that maybe it isn't actually "blued" - I see blackened metal on a gun and I instantly assume. I also wasn't thinking that if I were to remove the blueing I am inviting rust into the picture. And I keep my gun 'purdy so that won't do! It's a Springfield XD .45 with polymer frame and metal slide and parts, just like a Glock. Oh well, either way I guess I'll test engrave it inside and see what happens!

[Lee DeRaud]

It's a Springfield XD .45 with polymer frame and metal slide and parts, just like a Glock.Their website talks about a "mellonite" finish...further Googling convinces me that this is similar to the "Tenifer" coating that Glock uses. So far so good...

But Tenifer/Mellonite/whatever coating is (1) invisible and (2) underneath whatever they use for the colored "top coat", so the steel parts are still protected even if you remove the color coat completely. (If you ever see a "brushed chrome" Glock, that's what happened to it.)

The good news is, you probably can get that engrave-off-the-black-to-get-silver effect you originally had in mind. Do a search on this forum for "Glock" and you'll probably find someone who can help you with initial settings to try.

[Dave Lock]

Hi Scott,

I have tried this on blued steel. It was actually on a blued air tube on an Air Arms PCP rifle. The guys are right, you can't get through the blueing to reveal the 'silver' but what I found is that it engraves leaving a subtle, almost like a shadow finish.

Birchwood Casey (US Brand) has a couple of cold bluing soulutions which are very cheap. You could get some from your local gun shop and test it on a piece of polished steel. You may just like the result.

Regards.

[Gary and Jessica Houghton]

Here are photos of a couple of Glocks we have etched. We think the results were great.

[Scott Balboa]

Nice... thank you for the info and pics. The glock pic with the initials is as good as I hope to get, and I actually would prefer that look to a in-your-face silver engraving, since the rest of the gun has dark features. Thanks for all the advice...