Purple AR Parts?

B. Lahey

New member
I'm pondering building an AR for my significant other. She loves purple and purple-heavy rainbow nitride finishes.:)

I think purple would be neat for the controls, and maybe other parts as well.

Where could I acquire such things, or have them made for me?

What are our choices for purple finishes, and what parts would these finishes be good on? It would be nice if the purple is durable and functional along with looking neat.
 
Have the receiver stripped, polished and re-anodized purple. I built tons of custom paintball guns where we did that number on every aluminum piece.

The place I used back then was PK Selective Metal Plating in Santa Clara, CA.
 
Just paint 'em...
Get some red and blue Duracoat, and blend them until you find the right mix for the shade of purple she'd like. K.I.S.S....
 
Stripping the anodizing is the worst choice. Check into the cost and lead time before you make an expensive decision.

If you paint or coat it, anodizing is the industry standard primer, even on light commercial fabrication work. Don't remove anodizing, as now the surface would need recoating with a primer that has to stick to a bare metal surface that is reactive to oxygen. No coating is 100% guaranteed non-porous, but milspec anodizing is amazingly tough and has to be literally ground off.

The better choice is paint or coating. At the lower end of cost, an auto paint shop can color match and mix a 1/2 pint of paint you can apply at home. With a coat or two of clear over it, it will be significantly more durable than most shooters know or have experienced. Plus, the anodizing remains to prevent further corrosion. Any of the marketed expensive paints and coatings for guns would work, and come in specific colors. Some are even baked on at low temps to improve scuff resistance.

Buy the stock furniture first, as then you could match or contrast the colors of the metal parts as you wish. Or, have them painted to match the intended choice, although paints for plastic are more difficult to source. Using an adhesion promoter like Bulldog, and getting paint used on polymer car parts would help.

Anodizing, not so much, you will be restricted to the specific color that shop can provide, and the lead time could be extensive waiting for enough other customers who want that same shade on their custom parts to meet the minimum needed for that batch of treatment - ie chemicals. It's not a small batch process someone can knock out in a weeks time, it's mass production scheduling for hundreds, if not thousands of parts.

The most experienced nitride appliers for color supply the custom knife business. It would take some research to find those willing to process a small batch of gun parts that would likely need to have the existing parkerizing first removed to apply the color. That's a lot of tedious hand labor, buffing, etc.
 
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Type I anodizing, as found on a paintball gun, is a much, much thinner and less durable coating than the Type III anodizing ("hard anodizing") on AR parts. You can remove the coating chemically with a sodium hydroxide solution, but this can be a challenge and is hazardous. You can't get a good purple in Type III anodizing, only natural (OD green) and black. Type I anodizing is best for colors because it's the thinnest, but that also makes it basically unsuitable for a firearm. Cerakote, Gunkote or Duracoat are better options.
 
Duracoat

Duracoat works fine for such projects. This one I made for my 10 year old. (Now 12.)

All the parts are duracoated. Holds up pretty well. It's a dedicated .22 LR Build with a Tactical Solutions Uppper.

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The same anodizer that did a batch of red for me (a fireman's Officers ACP frame) later did a batch of paintball stuff for me. That Red WGP autococker soldiered on for years, got stolen, recovered, and later sold, and the red has held up.

I did a number of guns in purple, and it held up well. Tournament paintball stuff has a hard life, and gets tossed wet into a gear bag at the end of a day. The scratch resistance isn't what the better grades of anodizing provide, but I think it will hold up to the OP's use.
 
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