Hello Maurice,
When using "Nerofor" on brass, the same reaction you described is seen. The coloration goes into the brownish, but with a blue shimmer. The intensity of the coloration depends on the time the chemical acts on the material. After pretreating the material to be blued with citric acid to remove fingerprints and any oily residue, I paint the object with Nerofor until a uniform brown-black layer is formed. I then leave the chemical on for varying lengths of time, depending on the degree of tinting I want to achieve. Then the object is washed off with clear water.
I have no idea what the blue burnishing of the old steam engines looked like in the original. After all, it was 100 years ago. In the meantime, after careful cleaning, all my burnish boilers have a brownish base tone with a blue sheen. I always try to preserve the original burnishing. Damaged areas, as described above, can be perfectly repainted with Nerofor. In any case, I have only had good experiences with the agent, but have not yet tried anything else.
I am not a chemist or metallurgist to be able to explain the exact mode of action of burnishing agents. However, I suspect that the available substances do not differ much in their mode of action.
However, looking at the kettle you have shown, I think I can see that
the "blueing effect" is somewhat stronger with Super Blue than with Nerofor. However, this may also be due to the respective exposure time. I would like to try Super Blue.
Examples of my use of Nerofor can be found in this forum in the following thread:
https://www.officeofsteamforum.com/collections-pictures/doll-3441-in-new-splendor/15/