10-8 Performance Lab, Episode 4: Finishes For Your 1911

[farscott]

My concern with salt bath nitride finishes and the 1911 is that I have seen dimensional shifts in parts and pistols that were nitride-finished after manufacturing. I have a Springfield Pro that has been refinished in nitride and the recoil spring plug is now a very tight fit in the slide tunnel. I also have one of the very few EGW E-Treat (a form of nitride) pistols built around a Springfield NM-prefix Mil-Spec that had enough part shift to cause the frame and slide fitting to be redone by the smith as well as seeing changes in the recoil spring tunnel dimensions. As such, I am convinced that the combination of nitride and SA carbon steel pistols means one needs to proceed with extreme caution. I am also aware that the results from E-Treat were inconsistent enough for at least one pistol to be essentially scrapped. I am not sure if that was a process issue that has been/could have been overcome or a fundamental concern that cannot be solved as EGW ceased offering the finish.

I also have experience that the QPQ process is not compatible with certain stainless steel alloys used in firearms; S&W learned the same lesson on the M&P stainless slides that rusted.

For me, the state of the art finishes are NP3 and IonBond. Both can be applied to all metal parts other than springs and bores and neither is a cause of dimensional changes due to the small as-plated/as-deposited thickness. That being said, it can be much less expensive to run CeraKote over Parkerization. The combo also allows easy updates when parts are replaced.

[Robinson]

I watched the part you recommended. It illustrates why Yam getting involved in the 1911 world again kind of rubs me the wrong way. He’s pretty dismissive of the gun. Particularly when he talks about the 1911 having another resurgence right now and how he says the reasons are a mystery to him.

On the other hand Hilton states that he understands why people are still drawn to the 1911. I'm glad he is getting involved again, I enjoyed a lot of his past writings. If nothing else, he brings a balanced view of the pistol without the extreme platform bias that some have.