How To Polish A Slide??

[The Tomcat]

How do I polish a slide? It's a matte finish and I want to remove it and have a mirror polished finish. Also, how is jewelling accomplished? Thanks for your help.

 

[Jim Watson]

The short answer is with the controlled and expert use of abrasives, like sandpaper. A mirror shine would probably be about 1200 grit, after you had worked out all the matting and scratches with rougher grits. (A Dremel with small diameter wheels will leave you a wavy mess.)

Jeweling is done in a drill press with a small round brush loaded with abrasive or a rubberized abrasive stick. Form row after overlapping row of little swirl spots.

Maybe somebody will be along with more details.

By the way, is your slide blue/black or stainless?
You can polish up a stainless part like Grandma's silverware and it will stay shiny, but polish the blue off of CM steel and you will have naked mild steel which will rust easily.

 

[rcmodel]

You polish flats on a glass plate using progressively finer grades of black Wet or Dry emery paper & oil. Use straight motions in alternate directions as you move up to finer grades of paper. Once a good polish is achieved, finish with hand polishing with Semechrome on a soft cloth.

The glass plate will prevent you rounding off the edges on the slide flats.

But, be forewarned, a highly polished slide will pick up tiny scratches all over it before you get done putting the gun back together, and will look like crap after very little holster use.
If it is carbon steel, it will rust.

Jeweling has no place on the slide of any firearm.
In fact, other then the bolts on bolt-action rifles and the internals of fine double barrel shotguns?
It looks out of place most anywhere else you put it on a firearm.

rc

 

[The Tomcat]

Thanks so much for the answers. I bought a S&W Sigma to play gunsmith with a while back. If I mess it up completely I won't cry. I will probably NEVER attempt any smithing on guns I like, just want to hobby around a little. I found a site about jeweling. I saw some 1911's with jewelled hammers and triggers recently and thought it looked pretty good.

Like I said, just for fun, but thanks alot for your time in answering my questions.

 

[Clifford]

400-800-1500-2000 wet paper in that order works for me. I use #9 to keep the paper from packing and a good sanding block. You really don't even need to go all the way to 2000 grit, 1500 and some polish will do fine. It's easy stuff, just take your time and have fun.

 

[The Tomcat]

Great Clifford, thanks.