A friend at work that is good at Powder coating car parts asked me if regular powdercoating will work on firearms . Its tuff and durable but he says there is a rather expencive type made for guns . Is it just because of how thick regular powder coating is and you would have to keep it away from any moving parts or slides , rails ?
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powder coating ?
- Thread starter psalm7
- Start date
Dixie Gunsmithing
Moderator Emeritus
I've not heard of a lot of people powder coating firearms. The type that is mostly used is a sprayed liquid, baked on finish, that has had things added to it to toughen it up abrasion wise.
There may be a tough powder coat paint in black, or black/blue that will work, but you would still have to watch for it to accumulate on the ways of slides, etc., especially if a slide has been tightened for match applications, where you may have 0.002" total play overall per direction. It's according to how many mils (thousandths) its thickness sets to after baking.
There may be a tough powder coat paint in black, or black/blue that will work, but you would still have to watch for it to accumulate on the ways of slides, etc., especially if a slide has been tightened for match applications, where you may have 0.002" total play overall per direction. It's according to how many mils (thousandths) its thickness sets to after baking.
Powder coating and painting are not the only finishes that can cause problems in guns. After-market plating can cause problems with slides not fitting, side plates being too large, etc. And if internal parts, such as revolver hammers or triggers, are plated, they may not fit or function. At one time, when S&W and Colt did a lot of nickel plating, they made some parts with larger tolerances to allow for the thickness of the plating.
We used to send guns out to be plated at one of the better known plating services. I had to put the guns back together and make the parts fit. Sometimes it was not easy to do that without damaging the new finish.
Jim
We used to send guns out to be plated at one of the better known plating services. I had to put the guns back together and make the parts fit. Sometimes it was not easy to do that without damaging the new finish.
Jim
Dixie Gunsmithing
Moderator Emeritus
Jim, even caustic bluing will tighten one up. I've blued many model 12 Winchesters, that the owners were used to the wear, where the forearm would easily fall with gravity, when the release button was pressed. After bluing, they wouldn't do it, unless the slide rod had some polishing done to it, with 0000 steel wool, on the internally hidden portion. I've had complaints about this, and had to learn how to solve it.
Dragonflydf
New member
I would think you could powdercoat a gun on the outside and carefully mask the areas you don't want coated. I have 2 coated firearms, a chinUzi with a black teflon coat and a AR-7 with silver ceramic coating. The only inside parts that were coated was the bolt for the chinUZI.
I've done several and they work out fine. Powder works very well to hide badly pitted guns. One I did was a Ruger 22 auto that had been laid in a pool of drain clean, a powerful caustic. The pitting was atrocious... The powder hid them well. The most difficult part was killing the rust at the bottom of each pit. I used Naval Jelly..