Last chrome moly rifle I had plated was done by Armoloy out of Texas. It has held up very well but I have a few new big bore rifles in the stable that need protection from the elements. Whats the newest and best in this area?

I'm interested in any replies too. A friend has used gunkoate-type spray/baked on coatings on several hard working rifles with fairly good results, but a few did chip here and there. What turned me off was the thinkness and fact that the parts have to be sandblasted for good adhesion. I don't want to spend hours polishing an action smooth just to see it roughed up so a "low friction" coating can be applied to make it smooth again.

I've heard good things about robar, and plan to try mp3 on my 50AK (stainless w/ a few CM parts) after I fix a few more things. I had a stainless rifle pit in a week of coastal rain, so I'm paranoid now. I'll let you know how it works out.

Bob

PS. I got my rifle back intact tonight!!! Hats off to the PD!!

I heard rumors of ceramic coatings. Anyone ever tried one? My experience with Armoloy has been mostly postive but it does rust (pit) faster than stainless. So many grey stainless rifles out there it would be nice to have something dark that held its own against rust as good if not better than stainless

Check out Tonto's powder-coating thread on the 'Gunsmithing' forum.

George

quote:

Originally posted by Snowwolfe:
I heard rumors of ceramic coatings. Anyone ever tried one?

I'm curious also, I can buy a ceramic coated exhaust set up for my car and I was wondering if it could be done with guns.

Is that better than bluing for rust prevention?

Yes. Ceramic is not a metal and it can not rust.

Take a look at this website: http://www.casidiam.com/index.htm

they have a diamond like carbon coating. I remember talking to a representative there who said he had coated a revolver or pistol he owned.

I looked into it for a stainless revolver and essentially was told by the manufacturer that carbon coating it was a research and development effort that would cost money before the parameters that made it work were identified.

IMO the best ain't the newest, its the oldest..A slow rust blue, it will last two lifetimes, check out some of those old English guns that are a 100 plus years old...They won't rust like a hot blue, they are rust...Doug Turnbull does mine and it ain't cheap.

Not commonly known but a "proper hot blue" may be the toughest best finish in the world, according to D'Arcy Echols who does that kind of hot blue on his guns...I would hesitate to doubt D'Arcy on such matters.

Ray:

While I agree with you for carbon steel, stainless is another matter. I have heard that black chrome is a good tough finish.

Dave

I have had my last three rifles Gun-Koted. It produces a satiny black finish that looks like dark bluing and is very nice. I gather that it's some kind of teflon-based substance (PTFE?).

It's not a thick coating. In fact, one of my Gun-Koted rifles is engraved, and I was a little concerned about putting a coating on it. But the sharpness of the engraving was not visibly affected.

I'm not sure about durability yet. But if you go to the Gun-Kote website, the mil-specs the stuff had to satisfy are very demanding and the South African Navy and US Navy Seals put the stuff through some pretty tough tests, all of which it passed with flying colors.

Gun-Kote

I will say that Gun-Kote is impervious to skin oils, solvents and moisture. I haven't seen any chips yet either. I can't imagine how a rifle could ever rust with this stuff on it.

In any case, I will be field testing two of my Gun-Koted rifles in the Caprivi this month and will find out first hand how durable and trouble free the finish is.

Black-T and Green-T : http://www.snipercentral.com/birdsong.htm

I just finished applying Gunkote to my youngest boy's M-4 upper for his upcoming Iraq deployment. I really like it so far. I will do some carry pistols and AR's over the winter. I will post pictures of Chris' rifle after a year of hard daily use in the sand box.
lawndart

PS The matte chromes and Teflon type finishes do look prettier. The KG is definitely a hard use, industrial product.

lawndart,
How did you get access to his service weapon?

Just a quick follow-up to my above post.

Three weeks with two rifles in the Caprivi and all the sweat, skin oil and rough and tumble that entails--with not even a wipe down with a dry, much less oily, rag--and both rifle finishes were as good as new.

Not a sign or even a hint of rust and not a scratch. Try that with a blued rifle.

As Ray Atkinson stated, it does not have to be the latest to be the greatest. If you can afford rust blueing and you can find someone to do it properly, then as Ray points out it will last ahell of along time and does it with class.
If a person was building a best grade 98,it deserves nothing less.

Outside of that a good Black Ti.nitride coating is one of the toughest more recent methods out there that I know of.

Talk to PrarieGunWorks in Canada, they do quite abit of coating on the rilfes they build. Ross Spagrud can give you some facts on modern coatings.
I did some of my own research on coatings/cryogenics alittle while ago, contacted different companies. The word i got was that you should coat the rifle first,then have it cryo treated. Apprently the cryo treatment improves the structure of the gun metal,as well as that of the coating substance, aswell as enhancing the bond between the two,making it even more durable than normal Ti.nitride coating.