EW! Painted Guns!

I see this sentiment from time to time; I read it on gunblogs and in message forums that I choose to not post in. Any other tool in someones garage will have paint on it, to protect it from the elements or during long term storage. Nobody's shovel is blued; the only nickel ones I have ever seen were for ground-breaking ceremonies. I don't recall any parkerized shovels, either, for that matter.
But I digress from my original inent of this post.
DuraCoat, or MolyResin, or CeraKote are all cool and have excellent properties; they do NOT fit every situation, though.



Bluing is a dying art; one that I intend to learn when shop space allows for a proper setup.
A beautiful bluing job will cost you quite a chunk of change.
If you have extremely acidic sweat, like one current customer, you may end up either paying for bluing again and again over the life of a very nice Winchester Select, or you can go another route: Nickel plating.



It can be had afforadably, it holds up extremely well to salt and acidics in your sweat, and can be either a matte finish (like this receiver,) or shiny as can be, with a proper polishing.

Just make sure to mask the spots you don't want plated, or you are in for one heck of a fun time fitting all of your parts back in a frame or receiver.


And reassembled:



The problem with the anti-painted gun bias is this:
You can plate a turd, you can polish or blue a turd, but if someone, oh, say, carries a gun until it has 0% blue and 5% rust, there is no way you can polis, plate or blue a turd and have it smooth without dishing the hell out of the surface- THAT is where DuraCoat comes in.

Example:


Remedy pics to be posted in about 2 weeks.