General 1911 Finish Thoughts

[dust_101]

Question for you folks, I'm shortly getting my mitts on one of the old Sistema 1927 Colts in good ol' 11.25mm This will be my first of any type of 1911, and as with most of that breed it will need a new finish once I've gotten a few hundred rounds through her and gotten a feel for the girl.

I have access to bead blasting, scotch wheel, polishing, etc and will be doing all the prep work before sending it off for blueing. Now for this first refinish I'm sticking with blueing for simplicity instead of other finishes, my main sticking point is the resulting polish once done. So I'm looking for opinions and thoughts on what to do here...

...tad bit of history, just got done reblueing a Super 14 .30-30 barrel for my T/C Contender and sat there looking at a beaded barrel with 1/3 untouched, 1/3 scotch wheeled, and the last bit polished. Out of the 3 I went with the scotch wheel matte look for that barrel and it's very pleasing. The roll stamping shows up nice and it holds the oil well.

So what should I do with this new project? Harsh matte finish all over? Scotch wheel/light matte finish? polish the heck out of it? or my personal leaning as of the last hour, light matte the top of the slide, polish the sides and leave the frame a light matte?

Thoughts?

 

[HSMITH]

I would tape off the flats, bead blast the rounds, and then polish the flats of both the frame and slide. Even very fine bead makes a matte finish, and that is what I want on the rounds. For the flats I use sandpaper on a good flat surface. Typically I use a piece of glass. 320 paper will have definate 'grain', 600 will have very very light grain, 1000 will be almost polished and 2000 will be mirror polished. I don't use scotch-brite for anything but 'testing' to see if the machine/sanding/grinding marks are light enough to be covered with bead blasting. It is too thick and too flexible. You can't keep dead straight lines between the matte and finished surfaces with it.

 

[DMK]

Sistemas were service guns and weren't babied. Both of mine have dings and dents all over them. It's not noticeable with a matt finish, but it would probably look terrible polished.