Duracoat tips and tricks???

midwestpredator

midwestpredator

Active member
I had a phillipene made 1911 in my range bag for a couple of weeks, tucked inside a padded sleeve, and when I pulled it out the other day I found some surface rust on the grip. Granted it didnt have the highest quality of finish on it to begin with but the finish it did have was still in good shape, i.e. it still had a finish on it... so Im a bit shocked it started to rust.

That said, I think I will try my hand at laying down some duracoat but since it will be my first rodeo Im looking for any pointers that can be given. Thanks
 
prep very well, steel wool the surface rust away and degrease. thin layers are best, slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Just read instustions well that come with product, I use an HVLP gravity feed sprayer so I also thin it a bit with reducer.

Good luck

I look forward to the finished product.
 
I currently just have a harbor freight airbrush and have only messed around with it a little bit. How expensive of a sprayer does a guy needs to do a decent job?

I have a buddy that does auto body and he has several sprayers for different things but im not sure if I would want to use something like that.
 
airbrush will work fine, use a fan behind you to carry away overspray as it tends to get "dusty" with the airbrush.
 
I use a hplv gun. For best results I use the reducer also. To me honestly I use kggunkote on stuff that will fit in an oven. I did my colt fmap recently that I got on trade. If you have access to a media blaster even better!


Also did a savage action while I was at it
 
I use a "NEO for Iwata" airbrush and HVLP spray guns with .5 or .8 tips depending on the size of the item. Lauer has a TruStrip product that is pretty good at cleaning surfaces. Pour a little on a scotch pad and it will clean and scuff at the same time.
The paint is supposed to be put on in multiple layers so each layer should be a dusting and by layer three you should have complete coverage.

The paint is not as thin as most people think so if you do a stencil, when you peel it you'll notice a seam line build up.

You can use denatured alcohol or their Trustrip to remove the paint within a couple hours. It's forgiving but expensive to make mistakes.

Their mix is 12:1 paint: hardener. You can add a sheen to the paint if you increase the hardener ratio.
 
Brake it down as far as you can, blast it with 100-120 grit media, degrease with reducer then degrease again. Rubber gloves are your friend. I like to heat the parts to get any hard to get to oils out, but not a must do. I always seem to get a little oil out of the joint between the barrel and the receiver on a 700 BA. The I spray with a small HVLP gun that I bought at Menards, I had good luck with it.
 
I'm not sure about Duracoat but I have used the cheaper alumahyde II on my Mossberg. When I prepped it, I broke it down as far as I could and taped everything off. For all the screw holes that I didn't want to get paint in, I took foam ear plugs and tore off small chunks and stuffed them in the holes. The paint soaked into them and they popped right out with no peeling. Next I sand blasted all metal parts then sprayed with brake cleaner. I soaked it in acetone to further degrease, pulled it out, let it dry, wiped down with a lent free rag and started painting. When painting, I took a heat gut and heated up the parts to be painted until they were warm (90-100*) not hot. After each thin coat, I would put the heat gun on low and flash the surface of the paint off and kept doing that until I was satisfied with the coat thickness. I didn't want to put it in my oven so I hung it in my bathroom which has a heater exhaust fan in the ceiling. I turned that on and let it go for 6 hrs. Checked it and the temp in the bathroom had got up to 136! I let it hang for a week after that in a 72* room, assembled and shot a turkey with it about 2 weeks later. It has held up well so I am sure the duracoat will be 10x better. Not sure if this process will work for Duracoat but not sure why it wouldn't...just my opinion. Good luck!

Shelton
 
As pd and shelton point out, the best way to degrease is to heat the part after blasting with 120 grit aluminum oxide and soaking in acetone. Do this for a couple cycles to make sure you get it all out. The heat will draw out the oils/lube that are soaked into the crevices. This is a good practice no matter what you use to paint/coat your firearms. Most folks that choose to coat their firearms plan on keeping them, so doing right it the fist time makes sense.
 
You can even use the sprayer with the glass jar that they give you in the Duracoat kit($10). If using an oven just heat a few 5 minute cycles low, like 200 degrees to slowly harden it, it will off gas and smell a little but not too bad.
 
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