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I have a Night Hawk Custom Predator that has a finish I don't much like. I don't know what the finish is but it looks like parkerizing, but probably isn't. I would like to put a semi-gloss finish on the flats of the frame and slide.
What would be the best way to do this. I can sand the flats down to say 400 or even 600 , but then what? Blue or a spray/baked on finish? What about the finish on the rounded portions, which I plan to leave in their present flat finish? Can it be left alone and what ever finish I put on the flats also go over it?
Are the spray/bake on finishes available to amature smiths any good and if so which are the best and where other than Brownells to get them?
Sorry for so many questions, but my local gunsmith is not knowlegeable of these things.
Marsh

Anything is possible. Replacing paint with paint isn't going to change things much, though. Polishing the flats for paint doesn't work - the paint needs a rough finish to adhere to. A blued finish is possible, as is hardchrome with brushed flats, but a quality job isn't a home project.

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TR

If you want polished flats and a dark finish I think it is hard to beat a good old fashioned blue. As Ted pointed out, spray & bake finishes are not going to allow you to get a flat look in some areas and polished in others. The only way to do that would be to tape off everything but the flats and paint the flats with a higher gloss of the same color. Just typing that out sounds scary. You'd never get the lines clean enough to pull it off. So you are looking at bluing if you want dark or hard chrome if you want silver. Some of the new finishes like DLC seem to be similar to bluing in that the metal prep shows through the finish. What I mean to say is that the metal finish such as grit blasted, bead blasted, polished, etc. will determine how the chemical process appears on the gun's metal.

So in summation, send it to Yo-Bo for a re-blue or any other 'smith that has a good rep for finishing and have it blued with polished flats.

Thanks guys. Good advice, makes sense.
Marsh

One more question; if I remove the finish from the slides and have my gunsmith blue it, what happens to the finish on the rest of the gun?
Marsh

To have the gun refinished you will need to remove all of the old finish. It is probably best to just have the finisher you choose do all of the prep. I know that EGW and a few other gunsmiths will just blue your "pre-prepped" pistol but if you don't have a blast cabinet or blasting gun then you can't really prep it yourself. When I prep a gun I remove all imperfections first, then blast the everything (masking anything that will get polished) and polish last. Depending on the gun and what needs to be done I may blast the entire thing and polish from the blasted state.

I think it is about $75 or so to have a pre-prepped pistol blued versus let's say $150 to just have the shop do the whole thing. Depending on how high polished you want the flats that may be extra. So if you haven't done prepping and polishing for bluing before I would say trust it to the pros. I'm not saying you can't do it but with a $2000+ pistol why live with a mistake forever or have to pay in the end to have a smith make it look like it should?