Discussion Forums

Ryan Nafe

That was an interesting thread, Warwick, thanks.

The process used on the parts in that thread is a salt bath one, and looks like a QPQ sequence as well. The QPQ (quench, polish, quench) is what gives that black finish to it.

The single-phase gas process I’ll potentially use (meaning it’s just one phase, the part is put in the tank and then removed, very very basic) will give a finish that looks very similar to satin aluminum, or passivated stainless steel. Sort of like a silvery-white satin color.

That’s not really a huge difference in this case though, the end results should be pretty similar.

I did talk to the guy in charge of the Nitride department at work today though, and he said it should be no trouble at all to add some rifle parts into a run of the parts we usually make.

However:

He said they need to be bead-blasted (glass beads, fine finish) to prep the surface and then sanitized before they go into the tank. I’m a little concerned they could damage a barrel during the blasting part. But then again, we run parts with EXTREMELY tight tolerances, like +/- 0.0003”, so maybe it won’t hurt anything.

I’ll likely give it a whirl once I’m sure that the factory barrel on the 7mm Rem Mag is in decent shape.