Snubbie Score - Couldn't Pass It Up

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doc540

New member
You know how it goes.

Local guy listed a Smith snubbie.

Noticed it had a flat latch.

Some hooplehead had refin'ed it with Cerakote.:mad:

Then someone tried removing it and gave up.

I learned to polish and spent about 8 hours taking it back to the nickle (without removing the nickle...that's a real trick).

Seller says he'll give me the original stocks, too.

1955 Chief's Special Lightweight

(rollmarks are crisp, that's the glare)
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Beautiful! Why would anyone cerakote a gun with a nice nickel finish? So, how do you polish cerakote without screwing up the nickel?
 
How?

VERY carefully. ;)

For the large areas I used a cloth buffing wheel on my bench grinder and red rouge.

Start light, stay light, reapply rouge over and over again.

Resist the urge to hurry and lean into it.

Small areas, like inside the trigger guard, I used a Dremel, fabric wheel, and red rouge.

Then I polished everything several times with blue Flitz.

Final step is 2 coats of Renaissance wax.

Hope that helps.

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Removing cerakote without the nickel... I wouldn't have thought it could be done. I'm impressed.

I have a Ruger P90 with high gloss socom blue cerakote on the frame, which is beautiful, but I couldn't think I'd be able to remove it at all, let alone without damaging a plating underneath. Although, the cerakoter that did my Ruger said it depends entirely on who applied it and how well they knew what they were doing, on how difficult it was to remove. How far along did the person before you get in removing the cerakote?
 
Excellent observation.

The "Cerakoter" did not blast off the nickle finish, so that was a plus.

Here's how I bought it: (I had removed the Cerakote from the grip frame)
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It still boggles my mind that someone would be foolish enough to attempt to Cerakote a gun with such a nice finish. To me, Cerakote or Duracoat is something to be used on guns that are mechanically sound but have a less than perfect finish in order to make a nice shooter/CCW for a reasonable price.
 
I'm glad you got what you wanted. You did a great job of taking the Cerakote off.

Personally, I would love to have a snubbie revolver that had black Cerakote on it. I would not view that as second class or to cover up poor metalwork.
 
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