When I took apart my Ruger 10/22 Takedown that I showed in the last post, and looked at the internals, not only were they filthy, the bolt and receiver was not polished and had a very rough metal finish.
So I took my polishing stone to the bolt, firing pin and receiver to make them shiny and smooth. Seen here, the bolt on an india stone.
forgot to take pics of the polished receiver but here are the bolt and firing pin.
Should make the action much smoother now.
Boredom can be a very dangerous thing, especially when you are into firearms. You start pulling out your toys and think about all the things you’d want to do with it. Modify the sights, lighten the trigger pull and polishing the stainless.
For me, I got hit by the red-neck virus. I’ve always loved a highly polished stainless revolver and since I had time and I had one revolver that I wasn’t shooting this coming season, decided to take a sandpaper, some polishing compound and lots of elbow grease.
here’s the S&W 625 JM before doing anything to it :
First day I started using 600 grit sandpaper and using my fingers, started working on the cylinder. Here’s how it looked like after two hours of hard work.
Then I couldn’t help it but to work on the sideplate, just to see how nice it would look like :
Not too bad but definitely needs more work. By this point, my thumb and shoulders were all bruised up and tired. so I called it a night and stopped.
Next day visiting my buddy Dave’s home, found out he had a polishing/buffing wheel and brought me out to see if it’ll work.
of course it will!! this will save me a ton of time. I quickly rushed home and brought my half done revolver over. This is what it looks like after 5minutes!!
Definitely much faster and so much more efficient. It covers all the large rounded areas very well, but the smaller tighter spaces I’d have to use my fingers and do it manually. So after about an hour on the buffing wheel and then some manual work on the trigger, hammer and cylinder release latch. All done. Now to relube, reassemble and retune the trigger pull.
Here’s the finished product :
And the reflection.. ahhhhhhh..
what do you think?
If you see your 1911 (or any gun for that matter) with a feedramp that looks like this,
or this
you definitely need to get it polished. Remember, polishing is NOT REMOVING any material, just polishing the metal to a very smooth shine. Why would you do it? When a round feeds into the chamber, it will come in contact with the ramp and you want the ramp to be as smooth as possible. This will make the round slide up and chamber without snagging on any imperfections or grit/dirt.
here’s what I’ve done with mine :
it’s so easy to do with a Dremel as the shape of the polishing tip just fits perfectly. Here’s the Dremel tip and Green polishing compound I used.
Found out the extractor on my new slide juts out from the slide a little bit. I believe the original owner replaced the extractor with a brand new one but didn’t bother blending it to the slide.
After reading many different 1911 forums online, I decided to take a dremel and try to blend it to the slide. Here’s the result after 45minutes of careful shaving, blending and polishing.
Unfortunately I don’t have any bluing agent to make it black again but I think leaving it stainless goes well with the rest of the gun.
What do you think?
Heard that this was dangerous after reading many different opinions from different blogs, but a bunch of my shooting buddies have done this for years and years and it’s very safe. Decided to get a Franklin Arsenal Quick-N-Ez Case Tumbler from MidwayUSA to try it out.
here’s it is tumbling couple of hundred .45ACP rounds.
and the Media Separator thingy :
and the resulting super clean, polished rounds. Where are my shades? 🙂
After seeing many people on the XDtalk forums polishing their XD barrels, I decided to try my hands on it too. Thanks fo rogerxd45 and his excellent polishing guide.
here are the tools :
I’m using the Liquid Metal Polish Green Medium Grade from http://brilexsolutions.com
Here’s a close up of the barrel before polishing :
I realized that using the dremel polishing tip took a long long time. After my battery powered screwdriver unit ran out of battery, I switched to using my hands, and it was much faster :
I could cover more surface, much more evenly and much quicker. The tip of the barrel was the easiest one to do. First coat it with green stuff :
then rub away on a flat surface :
Voila! :
It took over two hours to get the chamber and barrel front half polished to my satisfaction. I’m sure I can do more and complete the whole thing, but most of the barrel will be hidden from sight anyway. so here it is completed :
Back on the slide :
Slide locked back :
and the tip :
I ordered a silver guide rod which should arrive from Pistolgear soon.
