I did the extractor and safty bar a rich, deep blue with a little butane torch and some machine oil. took about 3 minutes and made a world difference.:thumbup:

OH WOW I just did the trigger, magazine push button and take down lever and they came out great! I tried the oven and it didn't seem to work maybe I didn't wait long enough but what I did was used a cast iron frying pan and filled it with sand I placed the parts in the sand and covered them over and used a small map gas torch to heat the sand. The first time the part came out a blue, black purple color so I repolished and started over this time I got em out just in time and hosed em off with a lite gun oil and let em cool off wrapped in a oil soaked paper towel.

The reason I decided to use the sand was to heat the parts evenly as the sand helps to hold the heat in.

Its a shame you can't just do the whole gun like this!

Very smart! That's the way some of the "pros" do it.

I learned it from doing very detailed welding on thin little dash board parts on old Jags.

Many thanks for this thread, just done a take down lever for my 1917 Arty luger, results are fantastic :thumbup:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw4Rl0uG7ok
an interesting video about heat treatment. at about minute 20 it explains and shows the strawing procces

The procedures for heat treating each part and from year to year differed. The steels did change. So did the desired color and tint.

The complete instructions can be found here. I don't know why someone stuck them on Scribed, but you can read them all there fot free without having to get a $9 a month membership. All temperatures are in Centigrade.

http://www.scribd.com/document/15362...structions-pdf

There is a sticky here on strawing too- or maybe the other luger forum.

Just search on straw, strawing, re-strawing or similar and you can find it.

For those challenged in degrees C- a nice straw color is obtainable from 420 to 460 degrees F, the range depends on the accuracy of your thermometer, time, metal, and phase of the moon. ;)

It can be done in your "regular" oven; and re-done if it does not turn out to suit the first time.
Just re-polish to white and do it over.