Refinished my first 1911 today

[Duane Hansen]

Great job Steve! Its interesting how the reparked pistols sometime seem to accentuate the heat treated area on the front of the slide. It shows a much bigger contrast in color than the original finish had. Just my observation. I know that the tempered area takes the finish differently than the rest of the pistol but why so much difference than the original finish?

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[cplstevennorton]

Great job Steve! Its interesting how the reparked pistols sometime seem to accentuate the heat treated area on the front of the slide. It shows a much bigger contrast in color than the original finish had. Just my observation. I know that the tempered area takes the finish differently than the rest of the pistol but why so much difference than the original finish?

I wonder if it's maybe because this pistol had a really high polished finish before I re-finished it. I'm no expert by far, but maybe the polishing job they did before I re-parked this really brought the difference in the finish.

I bet since the original Ithacas had a very coarse finish, they really didn't show the difference between the hardened area and the regular area as much. But since this one had all the roughness really polished out of it, and I all I did was rough it up with the sandblaster to get the park to stick, it made all the difference. Probably what I should have done and I will try next time is to sand the metal first with like 100 grit to get the finish really rough again, then sandblast it and park it. I also bet that would have made the parked finish darker because of the coarse finish.

I think what I will do to test this is get some magazines and try the different type of sanding methods to see which one will make the best finish in the end.

I'm just going to keep on playing with it, and seeing what happens. After showing the pistol to some friends, they have some stuff they want me to park for them, so I'm going to try it and see if I can get good with it. If nothing else it's relaxing for me.