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?

[cplstevennorton]

I did have before pics taken, but my computer died. I'm trying to retrieve the pictures this week. If I find them I will post them. It basically was the same finish as all the small parts on the pistol. It was a really nice high polish blued finish and I almost hated to remove it, but it just didn't look right on a Ithaca. I like it lot more now that it's parked. And I took it the range today, several guys wanted to buy it. lol Not bad since I have less than $600 in the pistol with the refinish.

[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.