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Military Firearm Restoration Corner

How Would You Do It?


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The question train continues!

 

Would you bead/sand blast an action before you send it to the heat treaters or wait til it is heat treated then blast the action?

 

My thought is do the bead blast before heat treat because the metal is relatively softer and you will get a better finish because the surface is more malluable. That is my reasoning anyway.

 

In either case I am assuming the finish (Gun-Kote, blueing, etc...) will be done after the heat treating. Again, I am assuming here so, if wrong, please correct me.

 

Darin

 

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Do it after. Your action is going look very nasty and need to be cleaned up quite a bit after it comes back from the treaters.

 

Remember, cosmetic stuff always comes last. Get the thing heat treated and clean that up. Get bolt handle situtation lined out and get the barrel on and headspaced. Then, once all the machine work is completed and you're ready to some banging the metal work around, then you can start on the metal finish and stock finish.

 

And, if you're going to go with some type of composite finish like Dura-coat or Gunkote, you'll want your steel parkerized first - it will yield more lasting, pleasing finish in the end. And (and you can take my word on this) you'll want to mask off any friction bearing areas like the lugs ways to prevent your composite finish from causing the bolt to bind up. A lot of these finishes have a high friction coefficient and cause stuff not to slide as easily. I ruined an SMLE finding this out.

 

One other idea on metal finish would be to spend the $150-$200 it'd cost you for a reasonable hot blue. I have an 8x60s that was hot blued and the thing is beautiful.

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Thanks for the reply.

 

Ok, I understand. I will leave the action alone until I get the bolt situation clarified and heat treated.

 

I will take a look at the parkerizing and gun-kote. Is parkerizing is still a DIY project or something that you really need to have someone do it for you?

 

Darin

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