Polishing a frame?

[jadecorte]

How hard is it to polish a frame? Just wondering.

[Deacon Aegis]

Depends on how sweet you talk to it first, I suppose... hehe

Sorry, couldn't resist.... Way to many variables that would need to be defined to fully answer your question my friend, are you wanting to simply polish the flat surfaces and leave the curved surfaces matte or textured, or polish every millimeter of the frame? Is the person doing the polishing, doing it by hand, using a dremel tool, using a polishing wheel, experienced or inexperienced?

A pro may be able to do in 20 minutes what an amateur may spend 40 hours on and an amateur may mess up in ten seconds what a pro would take days of material removal to err on.... lots and lots of variables to consider....

[Ericthenorse]

is it a stainless frame? if not, then pollishing it will just cause it to rust right away if it gets wet.. A non polished carbon frame will not rust as fast, but it will still rust....

[greatgoogamooga]

It's not hard...just time consuming. I did my Essex frame and slide over a weekend taking my sweet time (football on, you know). Sandpaper will do the trick.

Strip everything down, including removing the sights, grip bushings and plunger tube. Polish flat surfaces on a flat surface like a piece of glass or a smooth piece of steel. I used the top of my table saw. Rounded surfaces should be smoothed with a shoeshine motion being careful not to rub so hard as to alter the shape or break any corners. Start with 400 grit then progress through 600, 800, 1000....up to 1500 for a high gloss polish.

Every other application, change directions perpendicular to the previous sanding. On the last couple of grits, start with dry paper, then add a little mineral spirits to create a slurry. Finish the whole shebang with some Flitz or Simichrome and you'll have a mirror...if that's what you want. If you dont' want a mirror, stop at 800, closer to a factory finish.

I did the slide in blue and the frame is stainless. Both turned out excellent, though the frame was a challenge with the corners and curved surfaces.

Goog

[jadecorte]

Thanks greatgoogamooga, you have given great insight to my dilema. But ya know, ....................... :wl:

[greatgoogamooga]

Yeah, yeah, I know. Problem is, my pics are worthless. I tried taking some digital pics that show off the nice smooth surface on the slide and just can't get it. I'll work on it this weekend. We're supposed to get some snow and it sounds like a nice project.

Goog

[greatgoogamooga]

Hopefully these pictures do my gun justice:

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e398/campagna67/6d2a860e.jpg
http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e398/campagna67/691e9ff6.jpg

Goog

[stans]

If you add the image tags to the url's we won't have to click on the links to see the pics.

Example: URL goes here

Your polishing job looks great. What treatment is on the front strap? Skateboard tape? Stippling? Heavy grit sand blasting?

[Hawkmoon]

I fixed it, but the pictures are really too large. For pics to be viewed directly in posts, please use pictures no larger than 800x600 if possible, and definately no larger than 1024x768.

800x600 is large enough to see the picture and small enough so that nobody has to scroll around on the screen to see the entire image.

[greatgoogamooga]

Sorry 'bout the image size, I wasn't worried about making it smaller since I was only posting a link. I'll try to reduce the image size.

The frontstrap is adhesive backed sandpaper. High tech, eh? The gun isn't done yet and checkering the frontstrap is a future project, when I get a round tuit.

Goog