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Posted: 8/7/2006 9:47:26 AM EDT
| I wanted to ask any of you guys out there who have experience refinishing mags with the Brownells Moly Teflon bake finish a question. It says on the websight that to refinish a part to abrasive blast the part before spraying. Do you need to abrasive blast the hard anodizing off the mag body ? or will the Teflon / Moly adhere to it if it is degreased and and you remove the old dry film first ? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. |
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I just refinished three of my used USGI mags with OD Teflon/Moly bake on finish. Turned out great. Don't know about long term durability of the finish as I've only used them once since I did it but I didn't see much wear other than the normal marks you would expect from insertion into the magwell. Stripping: Do not bead/sand blast the magazines. This will remove the anodizing. Which is bad. What I did was use acetone and a scrubbing pad (tip, get some sort of scrubbing pad that will hold the acetone, the one I used didn't and I had to keep putting acetone on it.) to remove the remaining dry lube finish. This takes quite a bit of elbow grease as I found out, tougher than I thought. I highly recommend some nitrile/latex/vinyl gloves cause acetone isn't very good for your hands. The mags cleaned up pretty good but still had some finish on them in spots, which I just left. After rinsing them I rubbed them down with some fine steel wool just to remove any high spots on the bits of finish that were left. Then I rinsed them again and tossed them in the oven for a while at 200 degrees or so just to get them good and dry and then degreased them again with acetone. Refinishing: For a spray booth I cut one side off of a cardboard box and used a coathanger to hang the magazine. I put the coathanger through the mag body and then hung it on the side walls of the box. (I bent the coathanger to look kind of like this: ^-----^ where the mag was resting on the straight parts in the middle and the the ^ ends were hooked over the cardboard box walls) For this part make sure you have as much ventilation as possible and I also recommend using a respirator, this is some nasty stuff. After shaking the can for the recommended minute I sprayed the magazine from left to right starting the spray before contacting the mag and ending it after I had passed it using quick strokes. You'll have to flip the magazine on the coathanger and probably turn it 180 to get all the corners and edges. Let the first coat dry for 30 minutes and then do a second coat also letting it dry for 30 minutes. (don't worry if the first coat doesn't completely cover everything evenly, the second coat will take care of it.) I'd also put a drop cloth or newspaper down on anything you don't want to get dust all over. This spray seems to leave a very fine dust on everything (another good reason for the respirator). Heat the oven to 300 degrees and hang the magazine by the coathanger from the bottom of the oven rack. You'll probably have to put the rack on the highest groove in the oven. This stuff really stinks while you're spraying it but once it's dry its fine. I didn't notice much smell while it was baking. I reassembled my mags with the original springs, Magpul Gen II followers and Magpul black Ranger Plates. I'll try to remember to post some pictures when I get home from work. As for the color its lighter than my OD green Magpul M93B but it still looks pretty good. I was hoping for a bit darker OD green but oh well, I put some new life into some old mags so I'm happy. |
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