Clean your parts to the max. Soaked in vinegar and the wire brushes to get to the pitted rust. Clean up in soap and water. I wiped down with lacquer thinner, through drying required. Did two dippings, cleaning oxide off with 00 steel wool both times. Rinsed in distilled water (NO Minerals). Hit with steel wool again. Next up, coated parts with penetration oil. Not required BUT I heat up the parts after oil bath. Let oil cook off. Dip again the let stand over night. Good hard coating. Caswell offers protective coating but I like LPS3. Just a quick run though.

That’s awesome. Nice, would love to give that a go.

How do you go about heating them? And how hot do you have to get them?

Heat gun on high. Got parts hot to the touch

Awesome! Great job.

I used a Caswell kit to plate parts on my last 914. Learned a lot! #1 rule - completely clean your parts!! #2 rule - spend time creating a rack to hang your plated parts until they dry. Everything else is pretty easy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGpYh-_llzE

Gun Bluing Steel Parts Tutorial
I was thinking that I had some custom work done on a 45ACP in 1983. The combination of high polish and areas of glass beaded for a satin finish came out looking great. I do not know if this kind of finish would work instead of the Caswell kit but take a look.

Best Bob B

I have now started sort of offering a service for plating ironically. A few folks have sent me their prepped hardware and I drop it off at a local plater. They typically charge me about 150-200 for an entire cars worth of parts. It’s way easier than the caswell kit. I tried that kit and just very sensitive so I leave it to the experts.

Those look really good btw

Those parts look beautiful indeed.

So is the black oxide finish the same process that gun manufacturers use to "blue" their metal?

Thinking gun barrel finish refers to how smooth it turns out, not actual blueing process.

Great job Mark !!

That black coating looks great. There are a great many variations on what are termed “black oxide”. See attached

https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/c...-oxide-coatings

Not sure where this particular treatment falls. Other than a decorative effect, it comes down to how rust resistant it is. The standard is testing in a salt spray cabinet That is a whole nother subject of study. The manufacturer of the process usually tests and publishes the results for comparison to other treatments.