Finish and cleaning question on Colt Diamondback

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Jim NE

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Hi. I have a Colt Diamondback from 1968 in pretty good shape, but not perfect. It's a nice shooter, but I don't shoot it much. I shot it a lot today, though, and noticed that when I was cleaning it, a little bit of the matte part of the finish on the top of the barrel and frame (to keep the glare down) came off with the cleaning. I was only using a clean soft cotton patch and Hoppe's Elite foaming gun cleaner. I stopped when I noticed the result, so no major damage was done, and the effect seemed to diminish some once the cleaner completely dried. The gun is blued, not nickel.

I've used this variety of Hoppe's on many other guns with no ill effect. And it also had no ill effect on the rest of the gun's finish, which is pretty nice and I believe original. I've cleaned the matte non-glare finish (located in the same area) of many of the Smith and Wesson .38 Masterpiece series revolvers and have noticed absolutely no tendency for this portion of the finish to change or disappear with the cleaning methods I've described, though I usually have used Hoppe's #9 on them instead of Hoppe's Elite.

At first I thought maybe this matte area of the gun had been refinished, or even painted, but there was no evidence of paint on the cleaning patches. I'm also wondering if the powder residue was creating sort of an abrasive on that part of the finish as I cleaned it off. I put about 140 rounds through it today, so there was a fair bit of residue. If that part of the gun has been refinished, however, any ideas on how I can clean the gun without removing the matte finish from that part of the gun? Thanks.
 
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No advice, but I'd love to see a photo. I wanted one of those so bad when I started in LE in 1969. Due to the price differential, I had to settle for a S&W model 10, 68 bucks at the time.
 
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