Finished my rifle with Gun-Kote

[Dave King]

Remember me, I was the fella looking to have a rifle refinished at high speed.

I'm done with the rifle AND my rusty old Colt 1911.

I bought a Coleman PowerMate air sandblasting Kit, pretty reasonable price and works with a low(er) CFM air compressor ~ $30.00.

Found a place in New Jersey with white 120 grit Aluminum oxide, ~$80.00 for 50 pounds.

Ordered some 6oz. Gun-Kote paint from Brownells. ~ $30 per can (better get 2, 6oz cans to do a rifle, rings, bases, bottom metal.)

I have a small compressor for my nailgun and little household chores.

Small set of pin punches will be handy.

Dug around on the Internet to find the directions to completely disassemble a Colt 1911 and the Remington 700. No special tool required but the Remington bolt shroud removal will cause minor cussing and perhaps bleeding without a special tool. I did it with a piece of leather, a shop vise, 8" Cresent wrench, hammer, punch and some grunting.

All-in-all it was easy except to the aluminum oxide dust everywhere in the garage(I didn't buy a sand blasting enclosure).

Get EVERYTHING apart, have a little box handy for the spring, pins, balls and such. The real small stuff I didn't re-finish.

Once everything is apart, de-grease with Acetone and sandblast.

Clean up the parts to remove any dust from the sandblaster, some grit gets stuck in threads and small hole so clean these up too.

Warm the parts up a bit or place them in the sun so they are warm when painting the Gun-Kote onto the parts. The Gun-Kote dries fast, I used several thin coats (recommended) Also, its recommended to wait 30 minutes between coats.

WEAR rubber gloves and a mask when painting.

I painted the rifle barrel, rifle action and bolt with three coats. On the 1911 I painted the slide three times too. All other parts got 2 coats.

Let the parts dry....... we're drying here........ done.

Heat the oven up to 300 degrees F.

Place the small parts on a flat pan and put them in the oven... a 24" rifle barrel just fit in the oven (I have a barrel vise and removed the action from the barrel).

Bake the parts for at least 60 minutes (I used 65 minutes).

They're done.

Let them cool and stick the stuff together.

Looks good.

On the rifle I finished the safety lever, bolt stop, barrel, action, bolt shroud, bottom metal, recoil lug, bolt, action screws, Badger Ord. base and rings. I tapes over the barrel threads and taped the muzzle end of the barrel off (Clay Spencer special muzzle). I used an old Dewey cleaning rod as the holder for the barrel for painting, handy as I could then easily turn the barrel on the spinning cleaning rod.

If I ever do this again I'm going to find a piece of high density foam to stick the screws and pins into as they are a bit of a pain to paint individually.

Once done the final product looks real good, everything is finished and no runs or such.

I now have a freshly finished green gun for my spring bear hunt in Alberta.

[Chrismadrid]

Right Dave - you've convinced me - Gonna give it a try too. Also going to give the air-cure Stock-Kote a whirl

[Dave King]

I haven't done the stock yet... Its still Krylon. I might try Duracoat for that.

[James Jones]

I like the Gun-Kote products , I prefer the airbrush method over the rattle cans that Brownells has though they work well , I feel a little bit better controle can be had with the airbrush , its good stuff though very tough , I have found though that its best to let all the parts cure for several days , I don't think that the paint reaches full hardness after baking , I've had it chip easly the day I coated it.
As for the stock painting , the Dura coat is realy good again with the airbrush but realy good results
Also Brownells Aluma-Hyde is a very good paint , once its totaly cured its harder than wood pecker lips. the curing time is a bit of a pain in the butt , down here in the swamp it can take as long as two weeks due to the high humididty so I built a heated cabnet , it circulates warm air about 100degs and it keeps very low humidity keeps the cure time down to about 4 days

[Chrismadrid]

Excellent info. Ta. Here I have the advantage that in summer it's HOT (40ºC quite possible) and DRY. What attracts me to Stoke-coat is that its water based and airecure.

[royinidaho]

Dave, way to go dude [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif[/img] [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif[/img]

Nothing like independence! Are you taking outside orders yet? [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Pics would be pleasing, also....

Wanna see some flames on that stock [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Good luck on the bear hunt...

[Dave King]

Hard to get proper colored pictures so these will need to do.

I painted the stock with some oil based paint, still need to fine steelwool the thing to get the extra shine off.

The OD looks a little light in these pictures but it's proper OD in real life.






There's not much luck needed on these vacations with a thrown in bear hunt. It's been my experience that Northern Alberta is sort of overrun with the things. There have been times when there were so many I couldn't make up my mind and just filmed. I'm still looking for a 8 footer and I believe I may find one this trip so long as some nice color phase variants don't show up before hand.

(My wife has long ago taken to wishing the animals luck when I go hunting!!) [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]