I'm building a rifle for one of my daughters. She wants it "silver" - so to her stainless steel or something else, doesn't matter. It's the color for her.

I was planning on using a Mauser 98 action I have (1915 spandua)and chambering in 6.5 x 55 sw.

Is there any wearability/corrosion issues with leaving the action unblued? (I will have to remove what bluing). I was thinking of putting a stainless barrel on it.

Is there a better way to do this?

A lot of SA Mausers were issued with receivers "in the white". Bare steel is a bit more rust prone than blued, but as long as it's maintained properly it's just as functional as blued.

corrosionX on bare steel

matte nickle plating + stainless barrel .. i spent the last year hunting with that combo

Not exactly a Mauser but maybe she'd like this look:

Here's an example of "in the white".

http://www.collectiblefirearms...ures/mau_0487-02.JPG

see if she likes french gray, which I think is very cool, but don't know how resistant.

Red

Brownell's Oven Cure comes in a stainless color and will protect the metal, especially the teflon-moly variety.

What's wrong with a beadblast and Enickel? This is one of my Grandson's Remingtons and the receiver is bead blasted and is Enickeled. Great corrosion proof.


Butch

This action was done in Gun Kote oven cured finish. It's supposed to match matte stainless, but, as you can see, it don't quite match the stainless barrel. It seems to be durable enough, though. The bolt is in the white.

On that note, beadblasted stainless looks well too as long as the relief isn't so strong that the surface shows rub marks. And be sure the media wasn't used on steel or iron, else the surface will be impregnated with enough iron particles to appear to rust.


French grey is a treatment that washes the color out of blueing and leaves a grey patina. It has about the the same rust resistance as blueing, but tiny rust blooms show much sooner and are highly discoloring due to the light color of the base metal.

In the white because I haven't got around to rust bluing it yet.

NP3 by Robar?

the NP3 stuff sounds cool - as long as it doesn't change the color.

electroless nickel, compliments stainless barrel nicely, very wear resistant

NP3 is an excellant very corrosion resistant finish and you have have the entire thing plated so it matches.

I was looking for NP3, I thought it would be a candidate, but couldn't find pics of it silver. is it black too?

hey, the skelotonized bolt on the 700 is pretty damn swwweeeet.

Red

quote:

Originally posted by fla3006:
electroless nickel, compliments stainless barrel nicely, very wear resistant

I had a Mexican electroless nickel plated years ago.....it turned out nice.

quote:

I was looking for NP3, I thought it would be a candidate, but couldn't find pics of it silver. is it black too?

It has nickel in the coating I believe. It looks pretty much like the np3plus
http://www.robarguns.com/np3%20plus.html
Electroless nickel would be a good way to go as well.

Robar's NP3 is your best option. It is an electroless nickel with teflon. It is very slick and is silver colored with a hint of blue.

sandblast, scotchbright, then permalac.