Who Offers WWII Style Parkerizing For 1911 Slide?

[DougGuy]

I have a WWII era Remington Rand slide I would like to have re-parkerized in the same style used in WWII era pistols.

[Outpost75]

Most places these days do manganese phosphate which gives the gray-black color, rather than iron phosphate followed by a zinc chromate sealer-dip as was used during WW2, to give the gray-green color. The WW2 finish was Parco-Lubrite, I found the following info which may help:

Reference TM 9-1861 - Manual cleaning and black finishing of ferrous metals.

Tanks should be stainless steel, only 4 ingredients.

1. Phosphoric Acid (active ingredient in Naval Jelly).

2. Powdered Manganese Dioxide.

3. Distilled water.

4. A "biscuit" of degreased steel wool (NOT SOS or Brillo pads!)

I used to do this on the kitchen stove in a stainless steel stock pot not used for anything else.

Proceed as follows:

1. Use one whiskey jigger of phosphoric acid added to each gallon of distilled water. Not more than 2 gallons in a 4 gallon stock pot. Remember your high school chemistry, ALWAYS add the acid to the water, by pouring it down a glass rod!

2. Use one whiskey jigger of the (powdered) Manganese Dioxide per gallon of solution.

3. Bring the solution to an extremely slooowwww rolling boil .

4. Add your degreased biscuit of steel wool.

Used wooden sticks placed across the top of the pot to suspend parts in the solution using soft iron "machinist's wire. DON'T use painted coat hangers or any wire with grease or oil on it!

The parts should be totally immersed in the solution, being careful that anywhere the suspension wire touches the part won't show on the finished part (usually easy to do like in the firing pin hole of a bolt). Part(s) to be Parkerized should be totally "de-greased" in Oakite then rinsed in boiling water and sand or bead blasted prior to finishing. Once you have bead blasted the part, you should handle only with cotton gloves and store parts wrapped in clean paper towel awaiting the Parker Bath. Any fingerprints will cause the parts come out streaked and spotted.

Let parts remain in the solution for 20 minutes. When you remove the part, immediately rinse it in hot running water to get the solution off of it. Use extremely hot water, and the part will dry of its own heat. When cool enough to pick up with gloves dip in plain non-detergent SAE30 motor oil then place on clean paper towels and you are done!

Rumor has it that if you immersed the freshly rinsed, still hot part in melted Cosmoline, it would give the sometimes much after "gray-green" tint to it. On board ship we used any oil that was handy.

Brownells has all the chemicals.

The original formula called for iron filings vice steel wool, but since I didn't have any floating around, and didn't want to file on the cast iron stove, I found that the steel wool worked just fine. What you get is a chemical reaction that causes an iron phosphate to form on the metal (steel phosphate I suppose, using steel wool). I have found that the resultant finish is just as durable as the Arsenal finishes and has exactly the same appearance! - an attractive dark gray, almost black. Some say that adding more manganese dioxide causes a darker finish, but I've never tried it, as I was happy with what I got!

We often used this technique when finishing .45s built on early Essex frames that needed a lot of fitting, thus often requiring the removal of offending metal. I used to checker the front straps (also violating the finish in a rather spectacular fashion) and the resultant finish worked great and showed little or no wear even with extensive use much like the official GI finish. I'm still using a wadcutter gun I performed the magic on back in the 70s and it still looks new.

A couple of cautions:

1. Always be careful of any sort of acid, even such an innocuous acid as phosphoric. I certainly would never deliberately inhale the fumes (although there is no great odor to the process that I could tell, but then I smoke cigars). I started doing this back in the early to mid 70s and still have no "twitch" that I can directly attribute to Parkerizing on the kitchen stove. Just use common sense, WEAR GLOVES AND EYE PROTECTION ANYTIME YOU ARE PLAYING AROUND WITH BOILING SOLUTIONS (with or without acids being involved).

2. Be very careful not to cause any splashes with the boiling solution (of course the same can be said of boiling corn).

3. Prepare your area and your parts before hand, don't try to do this on the spur of the moment.

4. Send your wife to see "Gone With the Wind" or "Titanic" or some other movie that whiles away a number of hours. If you ever want to do this again, make sure the kitchen is spiffy when she returns! In Gloria's case, she would be attaching the parts, but then I'm just lucky in that respect...

5. Once you have allowed the solution to cool, you are DONE! Re-heating it don't cut it, It simply doesn't work (I've tried it on several occasions). Have everything that you want to Parkerize ready to go when you fire up the solution. You can keep Parkerizing as long as the solution is hot, but allowing it to get cold kills it you've gotta brew up a new solution and start from scratch.

[DougGuy]

Actually I was asking who I could send it to that does it the old way. Nice to know -how- it's done but I'd rather send it out to a forum member who has all this stuff and uses it.

[straightwall]

Thank you Outpost. Very good info!

[cheese1566]

Try shuffsparkerizing.com

He specializes in M1 Garands. I have no first hand experience with him though. I just recall him from my CMP forum days a few years ago after I bought my CMP Garand.

[AggiePharmD]

Warpath Vintage offers Parko-Lubrite specifically. I know this is a criterion barrel webpage BUT this has Chuck's contact info.

http://criterionbarrels.com/warpath_vintage_llc

[M-Tecs]

Great info OutPost. Thanks

[rondog]

Warpath Vintage offers Parko-Lubrite specifically. I know this is a criterion barrel webpage BUT this has Chuck's contact info.

http://criterionbarrels.com/warpath_vintage_llc

I x2 this! I'm in the Denver area and know Chuck. I had him refinish all the metal parts on my Garand and it looks like a new one! He even blues the parts that were originally blued, instead of just parkerizing them like everybody else does.

Wish I could afford to have him do my '43 Inland carbine too, but then it would be too pretty for a truck gun.

[lancem]

I can do it if you are interested. Here's a shot of my Garand that I reparked. You paying shipping both ways would get it done.139800

[DougGuy]

Garand looks great! PM sent sir..

Outpost thank you for posting that, if I had more than just one piece that needed it, I would buy the stuff and give your instructions a try. I got a small machine shop here but no bead blaster so I would be concerned about how clean I could get the metal. It seemed to make sense to ask around and send it to someone who does it often enough to be proficient at it and has the stuff on hand to do it with.

[rondog]

It seemed to make sense to ask around and send it to someone who does it often enough to be proficient at it and has the stuff on hand to do it with.

Yep, nothing wrong with a little networking for your needs!