I don’t know if it’s as durable as bake on Cerakote, but they do make a Cerakote that cures at room temperature.

Good to know!

I'm equipped to bake it; I just don't know yet how it's applied and whether that requires equipment I don't have.

More learning to do... tomorrow.

air dry cerakote is actually more durable; it’s just not conducive to running a business with but required for plastics that cannot be baked to cure

What about Brad at Cummings Custom Refinishing? I’ve used his services before with excellent results.

https://www.ccrrefinishing.com/

CCR! Good idea. I may indeed contact Brad about a shotgun barrel that needs a little help. Thank you for reminding me of CCR.

This Aluma-Hyde experiment will be interesting and fun on the non-gun parts I’m machining this week.

I'll plan to get some pics later today, but the Aluma-Hyde plan turned out pretty well.

I ended up spraying these parts five or six times. That's partly due to a) my not-great painting skills, b) really bad lighting in the area where I was spraying them, and c) simply not having dealt with this product before. I did preheat the parts, and baked them for a couple of hours after each spray.

They look fairly good. They're not pro-quality, for sure, but for their intended use they'll be fine. And they're easy enough to sandblast and repaint if I decide later that they're too ugly.

I ordered two cans of the Aluma-Hyde -- one in matte black and one in OD green. For this project I used the black; the green is for a handguard I'd like to paint later.

The thing I noticed is that the finish is not particularly smooth. I don't know if that's a function of the matte-finish formulation, or if something else caused that. With that in mind, I definitely need to paint some other parts before attempting this handguard. I can afford to re-coat or even remake this week's parts if necessary; I'd really hate to screw up a handguard. Truly, that piece and a couple of others to go with it may get farmed out.

We spray a ton of Cerakote. Excellent Prep is the key. Degrease, blast, gas out (bake out any remaining oils) you'd be surprised, clean any residual oils, paint, bake.

Aluma-Hyde is tricky to work with. You have to constantly shake it and you have to make your initial spray on a scrap of card board as there's a disgusting splatter on the first shot.

You really have to clean the nozzle right away once you're done with it and also buy replacement nozzles as you use up the can. They even sell purge nozzles to use after you're done with a session.







Tony.

Thank you, Tony!

I need to practice...