Getting a pistol refinished

[Alex45ACP]

I want to buy a Ruger MKIII and I'm torn between the blue or stainless finishes. All of my pistols are parkerized or tenifer, I don't like the look of stainless guns. However, I have very acidic sweat. I used to own a blued pistol which would develop rust on the grip after I used it.

I was thinking about getting the blued MKIII, and once it inevitably starts rusting, having it refinished in duracoat or something like that. I don't have any tools and don't want to do it myself anyway because I can never seem to do things like that without it coming out looking crappy.

What is involved in having a pistol refinished? Costs, etc.? Should I just go with the stainless?

 

[searcher451]

A little research here ...

http://www.shootiniron.com/

... will go a long way toward answering your questions.

 

[Alex45ACP]

That site kills my eyes.

 

[Olympus]

There are many options for refinishing. Probably having a gun reblued will be the most expensive because it requires quite a bit of prep work and even more polishing afterwards. If you have acidic sweat, then probably rebluing isn't the best idea because it will likely start to rust again. That's going to be an expensive process for you if you go that route.

Stainless is probably one of the lowest maintenance finishes, but it can still rust too depending on how much carbon is in the steel. Low quality stainless steel can actually develop rust almost as easily as blued steel. I have a stainless Ruger Mark III and it's great. Wipe it off after the range and you'll be fine.

But there is also DuraCoat, Cera-Kote, Gun-Kote, hard chrome, etc, etc. There's a company call CCR that does refinishing that a lot of people have good things to say about. You can search this forum for "refinish" and find a lot of information that way too.