A couple months ago I picked up two pre-model 10s. One was in pretty nice shape and dated about 1948, the other wasn't so pretty and dated about 1952. In the picture it doesn't look so bad, but it was probably at about 50% bluing and had some rust pitting, but the barrel wasn't bad and the lock up was acceptable. I decided to clean it up a bit and refinish to better protect it.

This is the only picture I can find from before, which is obviously after I disassembled it. The picture makes it look better than it really was.



I stripped it down to bare metal using vinegar and steel wool. The plan was to use a friend's sand blaster but we couldn't get together and make it happen. I used wooden dowels to plug the bore and cylinders. The parkerizing solution came from Midway and was used on a couple of other pistols before this one. It's a fairly straight forward home ginsmithing procedure to parkerize smaller items like handguns.



You pretty much just heat the diluted solution to about 180° and suspend the bare steel parts in it until the reaction has stopped, usually 10-15 minutes or so. After removal the parts are rinsed with fresh water to remove any solution and them sprayed down with WD40. This removes the water and gives a nice oil coating for the new parkerized surface to soak up.

The results turned out pretty well. I didn't do any internals to avoid fitment problems and forgot to pull the thumb release out of the parts bag and refinish. I think it looks better than before and should be better protected from the elements as well.

I think Parkerizing (phosphating) is a great option to home-refinish any handgun (or even long gun) which needs to be refinished and has no future anticipated collector value. The original Parkerizing procedure involved a final dip in a dichromate bath to impart improved corrosion resistance prior to oiling. The WD-40 is not an oil and actually adds very little to corrosion resistance. A coating of most any other oil would be much better.

To take the program to the next step, instead of oil, you could spray it with one of the several Teflon gun finishes (preferably black) and bake it in your oven. That will result in an attractive, super durable, and corrosion resistant finish, as phosphate is a great base for Teflon. I think Beretta uses a very similar finish for some of their handguns.

As you mentioned, having a bead blasting setup available would make the procedure even easier. I have bead blasted, phosphated, and Teflon coated quite a few old military weapons, and they all came out great. My very first project was on a GI .30 Carbine which was worn, almost, down to bare metal. It looked like new afterwards.

I never thought about WD40 not being oil based. After the WD40 everything gets a good CLP wipe down before going in the safe. I usually pull whatever I parkerized out every few days and re-apply oil for a couple weeks. I'll look into the spray/bake finishes as well. Thanks for the input.

One other thing you can do after parkerizing if you want a black finish is to use a really good cold blue such as Brownells Oxpho blue. Use it before oiling. The best way to oil is to use a water displacing oil. Soak the gun in it for 1 hour. Take it out and let it drip dry. Now you have a very dark and protected Smith!

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Tom
NRA Pistol Inst

I'm impressed that you seem to have avoided the usual refinishing pitfall of spending money to make a weapon worth less.

The dowel was $0.98 and I already had everything else, so it was pretty cheap. The revolver was bought for $160 if I remember right, and it definitely wasn't a collector piece in that condition. Especially not with non-matching grips that were refinished prior to me. The other (and older one) survives fairly well until now and still has its original numbered grips.