10-27-2011, 05:41 PM
ss355 Wrote:That is a good-lookin' gun. Weight with optic? I'll hold tight for the range report.
What kind of surface prep is required for Cerakote? I'm set up for parkerizing so have my own blaster to remove finishes. Will sandblasting work? Sure would be a handy way to quickly tell a 223 mag from a 6.5/6.8 without having to look at the follower or loaded rounds within.
Yup. Blast the finish for a nice texture after a thorough degrease. Do a heated degrease after that, acetone bath, or however you ensure an oil-free surface on your parts before park. I only touch the parts with gloved hands after the initial degrease. NIC recommends you heat the parts before spraying. Have a good spray box with hangers that can be transferred easily from the spray box to the oven.
Use a touch-up HPLV gun with air compressor, or airbrush to coat the parts after mixing per the instructions. There are different matte-to-sheen textures you can achieve, unlike a lot of other coatings, especially in the matte texture range, but the smoother surfaces are harder and stronger in my experience.
Make sure you don't smudge the surface during coating and transfer to the oven, and bake at 200F for 2hrs. If you're doing templates, you can flash cure your initial coatings for 15min at 180F, then final bake once all are done.
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You will have an acid, corrosion, and salt-proof finish afterwards, that is extremely resistant to abrasion. It takes grinding to remove it.
I'm in the process of coating a bunch of parts right now, and will have that MGI system coated after I modify the locking mechanism to a more streamlined profile. The Grendel is in the middle of the top 3 blasters, with only the barrel FDE Cerakoted so far. It's stripped down now and getting prepped. The top one is completely coated, except for the barrel. Troy uses the same FDE Cerakote on their TRX and other handguards that are FDE, because their original FDE anodized TRX rails turned out more like shiny brown/bronze. When I coat an upper and use the Troy TRX in FDE, the colors and surface texture match perfectly, which is nice.