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He needs to give the Springer a rest

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"Bones heal, chicks dig scars, pain goes away"

Oh, hell no! When he was here a few weeks ago to pick up the Commander, I checked out the Operator to see what I could see.

Cracked slide.

Which translates into new slide from the Springfield Custom Shop, I haven't heard yet, but there's probably a new barrel to go with it. Which means.... a new lease on life!

Cracked slide? That requires photos.

And a serious talk.

Not a very good one but here ya go. We actually found two cracked slides that day, here's the other one:

That turned out so good..

Just getting this up here so I have a place to keep track. Saw this Commander today and got of pic of the barrel with 1600 rounds through it:

Bit of a post script on this Commander.

Anyone who has followed this thread or a few others know that Rob, the owner of this one, is a gen-u-ine gun guy, a high volume shooter, an accomplished shooter, who makes his living with guns.

He started mentioning early-on that this one seemed rust-prone. Finally, about a month ago, he returned it to me for a re-finish. The rust was just getting out of hand.

Rob is not one of those people who rusts everything he touches. He was carrying this IWB in a couple different holsters. Sweat, yes..... but this seemed extreme. I have worked on, I believe, every other 1911 he owns and there was never a hint of rust but they are either stainless or have one kind or another of a spray-and-bake finish. He tells me he has carried blued guns in the same conditions and not had the rust.

The original finish on this was Tungsten DLC over chrome. Now DLC is not touted as being great for rust prevention. Metaloy is much, much better in this department than DLC but I was very surprised at this rust. In testing and prep for a refinish I have discovered what I believe is the issue here.

When I received the gun back from Metaloy, it looked great and it seemed a shame to over that great chrome job with anything, but that was the spec. But off to Spring Precision it went-- the only conduit at the time to Ion Bond for the DLC treatment. SP inventoried and tagged each part prior to shipping to IB, and, as I understand it, gave each part a light blast.

I can't get it confirmed but I'm pretty sure everything got reblasted at IB.

Now I know from previous experience that chrome does not blast off super-easy, but it can be done; blasting it twice didn't do the chrome any good and in fact I find there is little to none left in some areas.

I don't see any fault on Metaloy's part; even SP and IB did nothing blatently wrong, they just went through their regular processes, but unfortunately, I believe those processes did not take the chrome into consideration.

"Expensive lesson learned"..... this was over $700 in refinishing and shipping. I will post more pics later but hoping my lesson may be of value to others. Wish we'd have just left it chromed!

Interesting thread.

I've seen several HC only guns rust in the hands of one shooter. They were NOT done by Metaloy.

As chrome goes Metaloy is the best I've worked with in terms of results and service. Chrome is not the be all, end all in terms of corrosion resistance, I mean, it doesn't make "regular' steel into stainless, but it does pretty good. Which leads me to the above suspicion that it was largely blasted off in this case. Not blaming any downstream processes or processors, just kinda the way it went. DLC in my mind is still and awesome finish, it's like Kydex-proof. There was not one iota of holster wear on this gun.

Rob came over today. Showed me this pic...... well this is a first for me as best I know. Somebody Rob knows really likes his Commander.

As previously reported, the finish on this gun did not work out well. I'm in the process of figuring out the best option for a refinish on this one.

Wow, shocked to see that amount of rust on a DLC’d pistol...

I just realized I never came back to this with the so-far happy ending. I sent it out for Cerakote-- insisting that it first be Parkerized. No reports of rust since then!

Ned. How do you take that picture through the barrel. This is not pertinent to the Commander. I have gotten some kind of okay pictures for folks but no where near as good as you have.

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Be safe and keep the brass flying

Terry Peters

Do your research but you get what you pay for front end or back end
http://www.pt-partners.com
@ptpartners_tx