Most anyone who frequents semi-auto gun forums has seen the recent popularity of the 2nd and 3rd Gen Smith. As many of these guns are used and/or police trade-ins, guns that are often carried much and shot little, the ability to clean these guns up cosmetically becomes an issue. While many if not most of these guns are acquired to be shooters it’s still nice to be able to bring them back as close as possible to their original condition. After having changed out recoil and hammer springs where desirable (gotta love Wolff) that is exactly what I have done with a good number of these guns. For the purposes of this discussion you can assume that any mechanical considerations have already been dealt with/considered and are not an issue.
Probably a good starting point is whether it’s a good idea to even mess with a gun’s finish. If a gun is rare or has significant collector’s value I say leave well enough alone. Destroying the value or the collectability of a gun by altering the finish should be avoided. On the other hand, with run-of-the-mill police trade-ins you have nothing to lose. The subject gun here is a good example, a 4516-1 that holds little value other than the gun itself which is easily obtainable. While he gun would be fine as it was bought, rather rough cosmetically, it’s nice to start fresh accumulating your own wear with the knowledge that a gun can cosmetically be brought back to almost new condition any time that you wish. Doing a cosmetic refurb is just icing on the cake.
Another consideration is the composition of the frame and slide material. My preference is to work on “silver” guns, stainless/stainless and stainless/alloy, although I just finished a very nice refurb on a blued/alloy 469. The guns that often yield the best results are the stainless slide and framed guns. There is no coating on the frame to have to worry about. Good examples are the 5906, 645, 4586 and 4516. With theses guns you can have a good amount of wear and finish issues on both the slide and frame. With the alloy framed guns such as the 3013 and 5903 you really have to look long and hard at the condition of the frame. What you see is pretty much what you are going to get. Other than some cleaning up the coating on the frame is going to be left alone almost entirely. The anodized finish adds strength to the frame and removing any of it through cosmetic efforts is a very, very bad idea. Other than clean-up, your efforts with regard to the alloy frame will be almost zero.
With a stainless/stainless gun or with the slide of a stainless/alloy gun you are then looking for as little wear as possible, and the right kind of wear. Very light scratches, scuffs, and glossing from holster wear like you see in the before photos below are easy fixes. Significant scratches of any depth and nicks and dings are a whole different matter. As they tend to happen to contours and edges they will be far more difficult to deal with, and when I see damage of that severity it makes me leery of the gun entirely. I did refurb a 645 with some deeper scratches which involved some spot sanding and buffing, but I wouldn’t recommend that type of action unless you have considerable experience finishing metals including buffing. The fixes that I am going to describe do not involve buffing although I have worked finishing metals and plastics extensively for many years. The fixes that I’m discussing here can be done by almost anyone.
The 4516-1 below was acquired (for too darned much money) as I could see that the gun had huge potential despite looking like a basket case. The photos don’t begin to show how lousy this gun looked. What I paid for it was admittedly based more upon how I knew the gun could look, and, being pretty much unfired. It looked like someone had thrown it in a box with other guns and had driven the box around in the back of his pickup for a week or so. There was lots of “glossing” to the top and sides of the slide as well as the top portion of the frame. Scratches were all light, of the abrasion type, rather than a sharp groove type, and there were a lot of scuffs.
My first step with a refurb is to give the gun a complete cleaning as if just back from the range. That allows me to assess the finish in a clean de-greased state where imperfections show up more readily. I then take it a further step and use Nevr-Dull to completely clean the metal. I know that some use Flitz, but I find Nevr-Dull to be a superior product on numerous levels. Car guys use it to clean stainless wheels and a $5 can (chemical soaked cotton wadding) should last for years. While the metal may look clean, when the wadding goes black you can really see what it does. Once the gun has been cleaned with Nevr-Dull I can really assess the finish.
In the first step I will go over the slide using a small strip of a Sctoch Brite pad. You can get them in any grocery store and are the green abrasive pads that usually come two to a pack. Some sponges have them on the back, and you can tear it off of the sponge, but that usually ticks off my wife. If you are going to refurb the slide accept the fact that you will do the whole slide. Spot touch-up is pretty much out of the question as getting an even final finish becomes pretty much impossible. If both sides of the slide are fine with the action limited to the top (or vice versa) you can try to isolate the good sections, but the chances are that you will wander onto the good areas, so it’s best to just do the whole thing for the most even and consistent finish. You can try and tape off the good areas (and I do this with sights) but results will vary.
Start off with the coarse Scotch Brite pad. I really don’t like regular steel wool, and the Scotch Brite is just about perfect. This is the rough finish that will do the work of evening the finish by removing the very light scratches, scuffs and abrasions. At this point you want to be working the surface in circular motions being very careful not to round over the edges/contours and lightening up a bit when going over stampings, if possible. I like to work the Scotch Brite wet as it forms a kind of slurry that also works to even out the finish. You will see the areas in question disappear into an even overall finish. You need not press all that hard letting the abrasive texture do the work. Some areas might be stubborn and may require extra attention but it will be key to work outwards from those areas again melding them into the finish in general. You don’t want spottiness. Once you get to the point that you have an even finish, and the issue areas seem to be gone, I like to wash it down with alcohol or GunScrubber and look closely at the finish again. I can then go back and touch up any areas that I missed then working back through.
Once the rough work is done (the Scotch Brite is actually taking away very, very, very little) I take a chunk of a Brillo pad (the ones that look like charcoal briquets) and wash away as much of the pink soap as possible. The Brillo is quite fine compared to the Scotch Brite pad and is perfect for applying the final finish. Again I use circular motions, wet, going over the slide trying to get as even a finish as possible. Some might want to run/drag the Brillo in one direction to get an effect that we’ve all seen on slides (sort of light streaked), but I have found that a circular motion, the same as the one used with the Scotch Brite pad, gives the best uniform satin finish closest to a factory one. Some of this will be trial end error, but if you screw up you can just start over. You aren’t taking away enough material to really be that concerned, although extra care should be taken near stampings.
Probably a good starting point is whether it’s a good idea to even mess with a gun’s finish. If a gun is rare or has significant collector’s value I say leave well enough alone. Destroying the value or the collectability of a gun by altering the finish should be avoided. On the other hand, with run-of-the-mill police trade-ins you have nothing to lose. The subject gun here is a good example, a 4516-1 that holds little value other than the gun itself which is easily obtainable. While he gun would be fine as it was bought, rather rough cosmetically, it’s nice to start fresh accumulating your own wear with the knowledge that a gun can cosmetically be brought back to almost new condition any time that you wish. Doing a cosmetic refurb is just icing on the cake.
Another consideration is the composition of the frame and slide material. My preference is to work on “silver” guns, stainless/stainless and stainless/alloy, although I just finished a very nice refurb on a blued/alloy 469. The guns that often yield the best results are the stainless slide and framed guns. There is no coating on the frame to have to worry about. Good examples are the 5906, 645, 4586 and 4516. With theses guns you can have a good amount of wear and finish issues on both the slide and frame. With the alloy framed guns such as the 3013 and 5903 you really have to look long and hard at the condition of the frame. What you see is pretty much what you are going to get. Other than some cleaning up the coating on the frame is going to be left alone almost entirely. The anodized finish adds strength to the frame and removing any of it through cosmetic efforts is a very, very bad idea. Other than clean-up, your efforts with regard to the alloy frame will be almost zero.
With a stainless/stainless gun or with the slide of a stainless/alloy gun you are then looking for as little wear as possible, and the right kind of wear. Very light scratches, scuffs, and glossing from holster wear like you see in the before photos below are easy fixes. Significant scratches of any depth and nicks and dings are a whole different matter. As they tend to happen to contours and edges they will be far more difficult to deal with, and when I see damage of that severity it makes me leery of the gun entirely. I did refurb a 645 with some deeper scratches which involved some spot sanding and buffing, but I wouldn’t recommend that type of action unless you have considerable experience finishing metals including buffing. The fixes that I am going to describe do not involve buffing although I have worked finishing metals and plastics extensively for many years. The fixes that I’m discussing here can be done by almost anyone.
The 4516-1 below was acquired (for too darned much money) as I could see that the gun had huge potential despite looking like a basket case. The photos don’t begin to show how lousy this gun looked. What I paid for it was admittedly based more upon how I knew the gun could look, and, being pretty much unfired. It looked like someone had thrown it in a box with other guns and had driven the box around in the back of his pickup for a week or so. There was lots of “glossing” to the top and sides of the slide as well as the top portion of the frame. Scratches were all light, of the abrasion type, rather than a sharp groove type, and there were a lot of scuffs.
My first step with a refurb is to give the gun a complete cleaning as if just back from the range. That allows me to assess the finish in a clean de-greased state where imperfections show up more readily. I then take it a further step and use Nevr-Dull to completely clean the metal. I know that some use Flitz, but I find Nevr-Dull to be a superior product on numerous levels. Car guys use it to clean stainless wheels and a $5 can (chemical soaked cotton wadding) should last for years. While the metal may look clean, when the wadding goes black you can really see what it does. Once the gun has been cleaned with Nevr-Dull I can really assess the finish.
In the first step I will go over the slide using a small strip of a Sctoch Brite pad. You can get them in any grocery store and are the green abrasive pads that usually come two to a pack. Some sponges have them on the back, and you can tear it off of the sponge, but that usually ticks off my wife. If you are going to refurb the slide accept the fact that you will do the whole slide. Spot touch-up is pretty much out of the question as getting an even final finish becomes pretty much impossible. If both sides of the slide are fine with the action limited to the top (or vice versa) you can try to isolate the good sections, but the chances are that you will wander onto the good areas, so it’s best to just do the whole thing for the most even and consistent finish. You can try and tape off the good areas (and I do this with sights) but results will vary.
Start off with the coarse Scotch Brite pad. I really don’t like regular steel wool, and the Scotch Brite is just about perfect. This is the rough finish that will do the work of evening the finish by removing the very light scratches, scuffs and abrasions. At this point you want to be working the surface in circular motions being very careful not to round over the edges/contours and lightening up a bit when going over stampings, if possible. I like to work the Scotch Brite wet as it forms a kind of slurry that also works to even out the finish. You will see the areas in question disappear into an even overall finish. You need not press all that hard letting the abrasive texture do the work. Some areas might be stubborn and may require extra attention but it will be key to work outwards from those areas again melding them into the finish in general. You don’t want spottiness. Once you get to the point that you have an even finish, and the issue areas seem to be gone, I like to wash it down with alcohol or GunScrubber and look closely at the finish again. I can then go back and touch up any areas that I missed then working back through.
Once the rough work is done (the Scotch Brite is actually taking away very, very, very little) I take a chunk of a Brillo pad (the ones that look like charcoal briquets) and wash away as much of the pink soap as possible. The Brillo is quite fine compared to the Scotch Brite pad and is perfect for applying the final finish. Again I use circular motions, wet, going over the slide trying to get as even a finish as possible. Some might want to run/drag the Brillo in one direction to get an effect that we’ve all seen on slides (sort of light streaked), but I have found that a circular motion, the same as the one used with the Scotch Brite pad, gives the best uniform satin finish closest to a factory one. Some of this will be trial end error, but if you screw up you can just start over. You aren’t taking away enough material to really be that concerned, although extra care should be taken near stampings.
