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I have a Rock Island Armory and wile I'm not working I got restless so I spent 2 days stripping the finish and now I am refinishing it I'm sure theres a chance i may have made some mistakes and will need to start over


any advice

probably should have asked before I stared

A: What are you planning on refinishing it with?

B: What have you done so far?

C: Be careful.

If you want a blue finish Brownells Oxpho Blue is a very good cold blue. Blue Wonder is another excellent cold bluing system. For a spray and bake finish look at what Brownells has to offer there are several excellent finishes available.

im using perma blue im finishing up now im also putting some hard core crylon on the frame
the blue dd not take to the frame like the slide

ok paint = bad idea

lunchbox wrote:ok paint = bad idea

There are "paints" that work on firearms they aren't available at the local hardware store or the local WalMart. Brownell's has a good selection of them on their website. Some are available in aerosol cans and some require an airbrush or spray gun to apply. All of the best ones need to be baked to achieve the maximum protection.

Proper surface preparation is critical in any firearm finishing process. All oils, greases, fingerprints etc. must be removed for successful results. The "paint" finishes require bead blasting to give a good tooth to the surface.

Go to Brownell's website you can read about the various finishes they sell and the application process for them.

MoJo wrote:

lunchbox wrote:ok paint = bad idea

There are "paints" that work on firearms they aren't available at the local hardware store or the local WalMart. Brownell's has a good selection of them on their website. Some are available in aerosol cans and some require an airbrush or spray gun to apply. All of the best ones need to be baked to achieve the maximum protection.

Proper surface preparation is critical in any firearm finishing process. All oils, greases, fingerprints etc. must be removed for successful results. The "paint" finishes require bead blasting to give a good tooth to the surface.

Go to Brownell's website you can read about the various finishes they sell and the application process for them.

the blue took to the slide just fine but the frame it just rubbed off

Well its a RIA right

Would you like to parkerize it?

It would have a much more "GI" feel to it too

I still have 3/4 gallon of the phosphate manganese solution and 1/2 bag of 80# aluminum oxide..if you have it stripped down to component level I could get my BIL compressor and we could blast it down and have it done in about an hour.

P.S. If you do decide to paint it (as in duracoat) a fresh parkerizing is the way to go..it absorbs the paint so it will bond to the metal much much better

Ok, we have it done

I sent him the pics...my camera sucks..so if he wants to post up the pics I sent him or he can post better pics if he takes em..overall I and he are very pleasantly pleased with the outcome...very nice 1911! Not much more GI a pistol can get unless someone brought one back from the war!

wow what a day just got done parkerizing my gun it looks great thanks to WarHawk-AVG

i will post the pics when i figure out how to make them work

Here are a few that I took..

The frame before


The slide before


The frame/slide after


The complete RIA 1911


Things went smooth..it would have been faster if I would have had my stuff together, and I would have had a sand blasting booth.

It went rather well though even though I had to take the pieces from the front yard thru the house to the kitchen to dump in the coffee can in the boiling solution on the stove (note, you need a can larger than a 4 lb coffee can, it fit but barely)

We oiled the bejesus out of it with CLP to ensure that the very porous finish drank as much oil/protectant as possible..thus the odd wet look to the pistol. My camera is lousy (I think the kids put their oily fingers on the lense..yay me!) but overall the pistol is 1000x nicer than the normal spraypaint finish RIA puts on the pistols

The slide originally had bluing for finish..it looked ok, but in this humidity in Texas it would have rusted solid in no time, the frame didn't take the bluing at all (turns out the lube lunchbox uses is Mobil 1 motor oil (which is awesome stuff by the way) but it had saturated the metal...when I sprayed brake cleaner on it, IT BEADED UP!!!!) so I poured about a quart of acetone in my wife's cooking pot [I'm a dead man] and let the slide/frame and parts soak to break up the oil...after about 15 min the metal was nice and dry. We sandblasted the parts to raw metal and dropped them in the solution

We did have a few oopsies when he dropped a piece then I put the bucket of parts on the compressor and it tumped over (you do have a strong magnet handy right?!?) well got all the parts finished, parkerized and got the pistol put back together (make sure your sear is not in backwards)

Overall it was awesome to see a 1911 that was worse for wear go from something to be mildly ashamed of to probably one heck of a nice piece! I would not be ashamed for a second to take that pistol to an IDPA match or to the range and shoot it.

Thanks lunchbox for letting me help you create such a fine firearm!