Hello,

I am building a gun and I have a gloss M70 receiver.

Pacnor is doing most of the work and I thought that I would have them matte finish the receiver when they were doing the rest.

They quoted me a price is $100 to bead blast at re-blue.

I thought the price sounded a little high. Is it?

Is Pac-nor a good choice for the smith work?

Thanks

blast & Blue the whole gun or just the receiver?

The price of $100 was to bead and blast just the receiver-

Seems a little steep, if it was polished and blued, seems more reasonable. I'd expect to get the barrel and action blasted and blued for $100.

An excellent assett is a brownell's catalog, in the middle is a breakdown of typical shop charges for various gunsmithing jobs, and price ranges. Some shops may charge outside of the range, but when I've looked at it, the prices listed by Brownell's seem reasonable.

It is a fair price, there are shops that do just blueing that might do it for less, but then you will have more freight and time involved.

Thats a bit high for 15 minutes at the blasting cabinet then dunking in the salts.
If you take the time to do some quality polishing then its a different story.

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NRA Life member

I had a M700 barreled action done in their "Hunter Matte" finish, $125 for action and barrel. It is a nice flat black, not a greyish finish like on the factory Remingtons with their matte finish. They also paint the bottom aluminum metal to exactly match. Not sure how durable the paint is as I just got the rifle back a couple weeks ago. I put a matte finish Leupold scope and matte Leupold bases and rings on it and they match the rifle almost exactly.

For comparison, there are two gunsmiths in town here, one charges $70 to polish and blue, $90 to bead blast and blue, the other charges I believe $40 and $70 respectively. I went ahead and had Pac-Nor do it partly out of curiousity to see if their price was justified and partly because the gunsmiths here are a bit slow. Depending on when they get enough rifles to make it worth the trouble to get the bluing tank all fired up, it could take a month or more to get it back. That's on top of the three months it took to get the rifle back from Pac-Nor.

So yes, Pac-Nor's price is a bit high in my opinion but the matte finish is certainly well done, no complaints from me about the quality.

As a totally irrelevant aside, the M700 they rebarreled got a Super Match barrel in .270 Win. Took it out for a trial run this past Sunday. Fired 8 four shot groups with some loads picked at random. One grop went just over an inch, the others were all in the 3/4 to 7/8" range, except for one spectacular .230" group. I am pleased with their work.

Compared to Shilen, it's a good price. They get $95 each for barrel and action to polish and blue.

Juneau, that price from Shilen was for a standard polish and blue. Their glass peen (bead blast) and blue was $75.

I thought this was a bit steep and still do. Either that or I need to kick up my rust bluing charges. Or both

On a well done bead blast and blue the reciever has to be polished first anyway although many shops do use the bead blasting to mask flaws in the prep. So in the end I guess it depends on what the finished product is like. If the whole rifle is well done and looks good then the charge may well be justified. Regards, Bill

Bill, is $200 for a caustic blue a normal price now? Hadn't been involved in any of that for some time and the last I saw it was half that.

Chic

Chic,
I can't really say what the going rate is on the average but I would think for most bolt action rifles an average job would run around 100. For a standard blue on a rifle that isn't badly pitted I charge 120.00 Canadian which is roughly 80.00 US. Other rifles will cost more. For instance an octagonal barrel will raise the price quite a bit as will sights etc. As with anything the amount of effort required and the results can vary from job to job and shop to shop. I figure that by the time a rifle is completely disassembled, polished, blued and reassembled it isn't unusual to have three hours into it. When you consider that the millrights up at the pulp mill make near 30.00hr for sitting around perusing Playboy magazine I like to try and match that whenever possible! I'll admit as well that I was out of the business for a while so that my pricing may not reflect todays reality. Regards, Bill