I bought a very tired but solid 1942 era Victory from a local auction. The mechanics seem good, so I am going for a period color correct re-parkerization on it. There used to be a company in Knoxville, TN that I used and they were reasonable, but they are no longer in business...That was 20 years ago.

Any recommendations, that won't break the bank too badly? Anybody on here do that?

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Attached is a quick and excellent explanation of the finish on the Victory Model revolvers by our resident Victory Model revolver expert Charlie Flick. If I understand it correctly, if you are trying to match the original finish, it's not going to happen. However, if you just want it re-Parkerized, Ford's Guns in Crystal River is supposed to be tops in our neck of the woods. Maybe that's who you were thinking about? I believe it will set you back around $350, and there used to be a significant waiting period. FWIW, if it was mine, I would replace the lanyard ring and a put a set of original (used) wood military grips on it, and leave the finish like it is.

One thing you may want to consider before you do anything to it, is that it could be a USAF security police revolver. I'm going to go find and post a picture; so, that you can see what I'm talking about. If that is the case (a S&W letter would tell you), I would definitely not do a thing to it.

Ford's Custom Gun Refinishing | Crystal River, FL

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I don't believe it is a USAF gun, although I will letter it to be sure before I do anything...From what I have seen, (pic attached), The early USAF LeMay guns were nickeled Victories with lanyard ring attached and ring was nickeled as well. I remember reading on here that the letter wouldn't indicate a USAF SAC gun because those guns were pulled from existing DoD stocks and given to the USAF as needed. The letter would only indicate that it was sold to the US government on its original 1940's invoice, not the 1960's redo.

On this one, no "US PROPERTY" or "US NAVY" markings on topstrap or side of frame.....It is .38 Special 4 inch with two ordnance bombs on butt...It came from a Florida auction in Tallahassee.

As to the parkerizing, I know it won't be the "midnight black" finish, but I can't stand the way it looks now and a nice clean park can only help it...I am getting the correct grips and lanyard ring. The lanyard ring hole is open and the pin is still in place, so a correct ring will be a 5 minute install.

As to the company, I was thinking about a place in Knoxville TN where I used to live called "Hawkeye's Refinishing". He refinished thousands of M1 Garands and was one of the few people that had down the secret of getting a dark gray/green parkerized finish...I know the secret method, because he told me how he did it 25 years ago, but his store is closed now. My carbine and Garand that he did turned out museum beautiful with the dark gray/green parkerized finish. I'd like to finish this one the same way.

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Here are some pictures. Notice the grips. If you decide to get a letter on it and it turns outnto be a USAF cop gun; then, you may want to consider have it nickel plated (I believe they all were, but I'm not 100% sure). Also, some had nickeled lanyard loops and some seem to have had it removed altogether.

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That's funny because I have all of your pics but one...In fact, the first one you posted I used in a WTB ad on here for a mock gun to buy for a SAC display. I have the correct uniform, beret, Bucheimer cross draw holster and blue SAC belt...Just waiting on a nickel bubba'd victory to put in it.

Ford's is offering $40 off for St. Patrick's Day if you decide to re-parkerize it. Good luck to you, whatever you decide to do with your revolver.

I think we have gone completely off the rails here regarding some of the replies. Except for a very small number, Victories were always hot blued over a dull bead blasted metal finish. It was called both military midnight black and black magic, NOT phosphate (Parkerized) finished. These are simply names for the hot dip black oxide bluing method still in common use by most gun manufacturers today. It was much faster than the traditional S&W bluing process so it speeded up wartime production greatly.

If you want to refinish it like it was when left the factory in 1942, simply get it re-blued without polishing the metal. It could be re-bead blasted before bluing if you wish, and that might look better. This information is widely known and has been discussed on this forum many, many times. Not sure how the story about Parkerized Victories ever got started. They weren't. Except for some rebuilds done by the Australian Military after the war.

Any local gunsmith with a bluing tank and a bead blasting booth can do the job. It is very simple, I have finished many guns that way myself. No need to send it off to Ford's or similar places and spend a ton of money.

A simpler and cheaper method is just to degrease the gun well and cold blue it with Oxypho Blue from Brownell's. It will probably look just as good. You might try that before doing anything costly. And lose the Franzite grips.

If you still want to give it an incorrect phosphate finish, which I cannot recommend, there are DIY kits available. It is a fairly straightforward and simple procedure.

It's an original WW2 gun. It looks fine to me as is. I would much rather have it as is rather than with a buffing and Nickel plating. Spend a bunch of money to lower the value. If you "can't stand it" as is sell it and buy what you want.

I'm not buffing it and I'm not nickel plating it, I am parkerizing it. The nickel plating was in regard to the SAC guns, not this one.

The original finish was Black Magic (chemical blue) over 120 grit sand blast. With the lack of markings it was originally a DSC shipped gun for domestic use. The SAC/USAF guns will not letter going to the Air Force and they were chrome plated, not nickel.

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Kevin Williams SWCA1649 HF208

This is what S&W used for Victories, or some slight variant. Your gun, your money, your decision. Black Magic Conversion Coating for Superior Surface Finishing

It would probably be helpful to recount how we got here.
JP@AK summarizes it in this post. It will take a while for the misunderstanding to get corrected.


My interpretation is something like this:
Bright Carbonia blue to December ’41 (before V serial numbers used)
Followed at some time (exact start known?) with a sand blasted surface with a hot tank black oxide.
Phosphate (Parkerized) on some Victories around May ‘42.
Midnight Black is the term S&W apparently used for the matte blasted and black oxide finish.


Several collectors have posted the term Midnight Black shows up on S&W documents. I don't know if Black Magic also shows up on S&W documents. If so I would have to say that's pretty definative. Poking around Hubbard-Hall's website I see that these days they also offer their own oil retaining maganese phosphate finishes.

I believe most of the gun hot bluing formulations on the market are re-packaged and re-branded Hubbard-Hall products. We always used the bluing salts composition sold by Brownell's. Two things are essential, namely thoroughly degreasing the metal to be blued and also maintaining a relatively constant bluing bath temperature. We used direct gas fired stainless steel bluing tanks, and adjusted temperature within a 5 deg. F. temperature range by either adding more bluing salts to increase the bath temperature or adding water to lower the bath temperature. The typical way to clean and degrease the parts to be blued was by boiling them in a silicated detergent solution. But there were nearly always some parts that did not blue satisfactorily and had to be re-blued. I changed to doing a parts wipe down using MEK instead of using the silicated cleaner. That really reduced the bluing defect problem. Except the MEK wipedown has to be done outside for ventilation due to the MEK vapor and its flammability. And it required very little more time to do the MEK wipe than boiling parts in the aqueous silicate cleaning bath.

The actual bluing of a gun is the easy part. The metal prep and polish is the time-consuming and labor intensive.part. Hot oxide bath bluing wasn't really in wide use as a gun finishing procedure until late in the 1930s. Ned Schwing's book on Winchester Slide Action .22 Rifles contains a fairly extensive discussion of how Winchester did hot oxide bath gun bluing, very worthwhile reading. Previously, Winchester did mainly rust bluing of its guns.

My opinion without proof is that someone at S&W decided to call the finish used on the Victory model revolvers "midnight black" or "military midnight black." So it was used as an internal identification term. However the process bluing chemical used was called "black magic" which was what the vendor, Hubbard-Hall, called it. In other words, revolvers had a "midnight black" finish through the use of the "black magic" chemical bluing process.

Since there are no military markings, it could also be a U.S. Maritime Commission pistol. I have one that was shipped in 1942 to the USMC and it has no military markings.

The interesting thing to me about the one I have is the forcing cone was not cut straight at the factory, the gap between the cylinder and the forcing cone is fine on the right side, and a lot bigger gap on the left. It shoots fine, but theres a noticeable flame out the left side and it’s louder than other 38 Special revolver I’ve shot.

It amazes me how it was able to leave the factory like this, or not get returned so the issue could be fixed. But, in 1942, small arms were being spit out as fast as possible.

I am going to request a letter on it before I do anything too drastic. Our resident expert said it was 1942 ship date, but no cursory way to tell more since they weren't shipped numerically.

I checked this forcing cone and it looks even and close all the way around. It seems fairly tight and probably has been carried a lot more than it has been shot. It's ugly as homemade sin as it sits.

It was from an estate sale in northern Florida and we had dozens of WW2 air bases around here, but it may have been carted here through Idaho in 1960. The only extra markings are two ordnance bombs on the butt opposite the serial number.

I cannot see the SN, but if it is below around V170xxx, it is likely to have been manufactured and probably shipped sometime in 1942. And if it has no property stamp it is likely to be either a DSC or a Maritime Commission gun. The former are considerably more common than the latter. In any event, it is unlikely to have been a military Victory, nearly all of which (in .38 Special) went to the U. S. Navy.

Serial is V159236...Ordnanceguy said it was 1942 in the Victory thread.

That would put probable shipment in the later part of '42, 4th quarter. Generally, shipping date for Victories tracks fairly closely with manufacture, i.e., they left the factory (but not always) within a few weeks or months after assembly. If an exact shipping date is needed (which it is usually not) a letter would be necessary. A DSC revolver letter will often reveal to where it shipped, such as to some law enforcement agency or to a government contractor (Boeing, Ford, DuPont, etc.). The total number of revolvers distributed through DSC was around 72K.

I picked up an excellent victory revolver that had a mismatched cylinder, barrel, and frame serial numbers, I believe an arsenal rework. Finish was so-so, I purchased it for a shooter to save my collectors. I had it locally Cerakoted to a finish that very closely matches original and makes a great shooter. Collector value was not an issue, I wanted a shooter and it really had no collector value being so mismatched.

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Kevin in Oregon

I just pick this one up V246507 can anyone date this one.

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Years ago I got a Victory model from the National Guard armory for 75$.(1980s) It was solid but the finish was worn. I wanted to reparkerize it but the shop all but insisted I should get it blued. So I ended up with a matte blue which was inauthentic. Years(90's) later I got a well worn British Victory model for 60$ from a wholesaler. It was stuck due to the extractor rod loosening and had a well worn black paint finish over a worn parkerized. Cylinder and sideplate were swapped at some point based on numbers. Probably from India or Pakistan. It sat in a safe for 15 years as-is. Finally I decided to make it work and by then I was into DIY stove-top parkerizing. The only parts I replaced were a cylinder stop and the beat wood grips. I disassembled it and snuck the parts into work to bead blast them, not sandblast. I used Manganese phosphate and the cylinder came out almost black for some reason but the rest looked normal. Now it is a perfectly good shooter, with shiny bore and cylinder play is not bad. If you have a way to bead blast gun steel or other ways to remove all old finish and rust, you can do it yourself on the cheap. It is really a pretty easy process if you read the instructions. I have done various guns and gun parts myself. For the cost of the chemical kits.

I appreciate it...I was going to try soda blast because of the fine grit of the baking soda and it won't remove any markings. I already bought a soda blaster kit from Amazon and the manganese phosphate. I just need a good day of patience, disassembly and more patience.

good information what Tom said above and what we used to do many years ago, when we had the shop.......... if you can access either 'Zinc phosphate ( that was used to get the gray or even greenish finish , but to get the green,one had to slow cook the parts in 'cosmoline' for a while turned the gun 'green": looked like it was in "storage" ( yes there were shops out there who used to cheat many of these guns back years ago, had to be careful just who you bought off of then, caveat emptor),,,as for the black, either 'black oxide" over a bead blasted finish, but that is a bluing, that is actually 'black' (no niters in the solution), the black in parkerizing is like Tom said above "manganese phosphate" what the military did like on the M-16s and stuff.....and yes it easy enough to do , my wife actually did an old Colt Detective special ,taken all apart and she did it on the kitchen stove just to proove it could be done and yes ,by a girl........

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dan
NRA Benefactor,PMA

My buddy bought a bead blast cabinet at Harbor Freight (I believe around $100) and has done some great work for me. One was this finished challenged ex police model 10 HB which he bead blasted and then had the gunsmith I bought it from reblue it. Came out a beautiful matte blue similar to a model 28. It’s perfect to me.
Another finish challenged blued model 10 was bead blasted then home parkerized by another friend.
My victory is a rough finish I would say is more towards grey than black but I think it’s original.

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I’ve used these guys for Ceracoating. They offer Parkerizing. (They do refer to it as “almost black.”). It’s your revolver, so do as you please. I’ve been pleased with this shop’s services.

Services - Oakridge Custom Finishing, LLC

This is the British Victory that I refinished with stove top phosphate. Like I said I have no idea why the cylinder turned out about blackish, and darker. Brownells sells a chemical that you can dip your steel parts in before you parkerize that is intended to make them come out black, but I did not use that this time. I let the chambers be phosphated but I used tight rubber stoppers to not bead blast the barrel bore and also left them in to not phosphate the nice shiny bore. Some insisted to me that the almost boiling hot phospate solution would cause the stoppers to pop out of the barrel but that did not happen. I use a big glass thermometer to keep my solution heated within the ideal range, well below boiling point. It is important that you rinse the parts well in hot water to neutralize the chemical reaction and I have a can of neutralizer to spray on which is an oily stuff sort of like WD-40 maybe. The hot water evaporates and the spray penetrates and also displaces any trapped moisture. I don't care for the zinc type solution becuase I always got a really light pale gray color compared to manganese.

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I wish you were closer to me....I'd buy you a beer and employ your services. That looks really good to me. I have seen original finishes on these Victories that sometimes exhibit that same effect of darker cylinder. It must be something about the metallurgy makeup differences between the two.

Did you completely disassemble the gun all the way down to the bare frame before parkerizing or did you leave some things attached? I see that your hammer and trigger look correct because they have the right case hardened look versus the phosphate frame, etc.

REALLY good job on that.

I have never taken on the task of working on other people's guns for liability reasons. However I also do no longer have access to a bead blast cabinet like I did when I was working. Although I know a gunsmith who might do it or let me. I Stripped the gun down to bare barrel and frame and beaded to bare steel. Then you got to do the process before any rust can start as there can be no oil or dirt or fingerprints on the metal. I smuggled it in parts at a time, as bringing major gun parts in might cause a tizzy so I worked after hours. The hammer and trigger case is pretty much visibly gone from this one. It was rode hard during the war and after. But it had no rust or pitting. I also parkerized a Chinese Tokarev, a 1910 Mauser .25 beater, and mil surp parts for my restorations over the years. I suppose stripped to shiny bare steel can be parkerized, no need to blast, just clean and contamination free.

The commercial Parkerizing (phosphate) finishing procedure includes a final dipping of the phosphated part into a solution of sodium dichromate. That is a rust inhibitor. A phosphate finish is an excellent foundation for the application of a spray and bake black Teflon finish. I have done that on many guns. It is nearly indestructible and also looks good. Probably the highest durability gun finish that can be easily performed.