Matching New Stainless to Old Stainless

[AxeHandle]

Fitting a new stainless Bisley grip frame to a stainless Blackhawk. You guys have any helpful hints about how to match the surface finish of the old stainless and new stainless with a minimal amount of effort??

[brant]

Huey says fingernail files work great to bring a used gun back to looking as good or better than original. I bet he comments here if he sees this.

[bigbore5]

Bead blast it

[Encore64]

I'd most definitely brush finish it using common Emory Boards.

It's time consuming, but requires very little effort.

Bead Blasting is easy, but has to be refinished to repair scratches and handling marks. Brushed finishes can be touched up in minutes...

[bigbore5]

He asked about easy. I've refinished stainless with Scotchbrite pads more than anything. I've also used various carding wire brushes on the bench polisher.

Wet sanding any blemishes or scratches out down to 1200 grit, then giving a satin finish with grey scotchbrite gives an excellent finish, but takes a few hours, depending on what shape the base gun was in. I've brought back some rough police trade-in revolvers

[Encore64]

Oct 22, 2024 19:08:01 GMT -5 bigbore5 said:

He asked about easy. I've refinished stainless with Scotchbrite pads more than anything. I've also used various carding wire brushes on the bench polisher.

Wet sanding any blemishes or scratches out down to 1200 grit, then giving a satin finish with grey scotchbrite gives an excellent finish, but takes a few hours, depending on what shape the base gun was in. I've brought back some rough police trade-in revolvers

Sounds like we're saying the same thing with a minor difference in choice of materials used.

It works extremely well and is easy to touch up in the future...

[bigbore5]

I bought a pack of the various emery boards, but haven't tried them yet. Probably easier than gluing sand paper to the popsicle sticks like I have been doing for 40 some years.

[weiler]

This is well timed as my old 629-3 is looking a bit rough

[AxeHandle]

Been looking for this thread to two days. Why in the world did I put it in this folder?

[bradshaw]

Stan.... a belt sander and sanding blocks with wet paper are my tools of choice for mating a grip frame to a Ruger single action. A Dremel with 1/2” drum sander, followed by wetted emory, are my tools for contouring the trigger guard. All work is done with the grip frame is OFF the frame. It is important to transition from relatively coarse to finer sandpaper/emory before final matching of grip frame to frame. Persons more skilled probably use other methods, but I do better with above tools. Believe my sander takes 6”x24” belts. Belt sander has a vertical built-in disk which receives some use, mostly on wood panels.

My work relies on frequent fitups. Some of the hand sanding is done with 400 grit under a trickle of water in stainless steel sick.

Ronnie Wells Grip Frames easier to fit than Ruger grip frames. The reason is country simple: Ronnie shop-researched the frame platters are Ruger’s consistent hole pattern to improve hole & countersink dimensions. Like the rest of Ronnie’s work, the improvement makes life easier. How is that so? The head on Ruger grip frame screws is often eccentric to the threaded shank. On a Ruger grip frame, an eccentric head causes the grip to shift from side to side, and lengthwise, as the screw in tightened. Unless screws are replaced as factory assembled, chances are grip frame to frame fir will be off.

I brought up this subject during a discussion with John Linebaugh before I met Ronnie. John was fully aquainted with the screw head eccentricity, finally making tool to correct the Ruger screws. When I brought the subject up with Ronnie, he had already had a fix with his grip frames.
David Bradshaw