Bead blast the slide on a Shield?

[ammodave]

I'm partial to two tone pistols? Can you just bead blast the slide on a Shield to achieve a 2 tone finish or do you really need to coat or plate the slide afterwards? I have several stainless S&W revolvers with either a polished or matte finish and they seem to hold up with no rust or corrosion. The Shield slide is stainless, right?

 

[RobzGuns]

ajames does great work on the Shield for a good price.
Here's a reply he did, referring to removing the 'mag safety' lettering, but it relates what he does to give a bi-tone look.
Hope it helps.

Here is a picture of the right side, and as you can see the stupid warning has been blasted off. The proper way to remove it would be to abrasive blast the slide, I use 80 grit Aluminum Oxide. After you remove the lettering you can the glass bead or refinish depending on what you want your finished product to look like.

 

[ajamesp51]

The problem is that is seems that S&W changed the way they do the Melonite process. On the early Shields you just abrasive blasted the black off (this would not remove the melonite just the black top coat) and then Glass Bead the metal for the smooth satin finish. All M&P pistols are already a grade of stainless steel as it was so you would just be exposing the base metal. Well about a year after I noticed that some of the newer Shield's when you blast the black off, you would still be left with a weird blue streak marbling around some of the openings were the hardness was supposed to be harder (dovetails, Breechface, Extractor hole). Even if you blast the heck out of the slide, the marbling did not want to go away. When you blast the slide you are only removing the top outer blueingnot trying to remove metal, when you remove metal you are then removing the Melonite/Nitration/Tennifer.

As for the warnings, I tell people I can not promise to remove the warning, it depends how deep the engraving is. Again you really do not want to remove metal. It seems like early Shields had very shallow laser etching.

Like anything else if a customer really wants it and I gave them the warnings I will do what a customer wants. But I also want them to make an educated decision.

 

[ammodave]

I was hoping to get by with just bead blasting the slide. I'm not a big fan of painted guns (melonite, gunkote, etc.); I think I'll look into satin nickel instead.

 

[jfd]

Might also want to consider Robar. Did mine that way, very happy with result. A little pricier than painted/baked finishes but looks nice and reviews show it to hold up well over time.