Hi all, I thought Sig Forum might be interested in my latest project.

A while back I got one of the those Law Enforcement trade in P220ST's that were for sale in the classifieds. When I picked it up I noticed a little wear and tear, but nothing to bad, however when I got it out to the range I found that only 1 of the three mags would lock the slide back on empty, and over about 200 rounds I got a couple light strikes. Pulling the trigger again set the rounds off.

No biggie, you buy a used gun you know you might have to adjust it a little. I decided to do a little refresh of the pistol at the same time.

Here it is as delivered:



After the range trip I went ahead and fully disassembled it:


A thorough cleaning before the frame and slide went into my bead blaster for some 120 grit beads at about 40psi (sorry no pictures of that. I just masked the rails with duct tape and went real light until I had a uniform appearance):


I had some Brownells Alumacoat around so I cleaned, sprayed and baked the controls real quick. I didn't blast these, because once degreased they looked pretty good for finish adhesion:


Then I organized my pile o' parts:


And reassembled the pistol:


I took it to the range today, and it flawlessly went through 200rds of mixed .45 ACP, so I'll call this a success. There was a little lag time while parts got delivered, and while it got to the front of the line of my projects, but I only really have one Saturday's worth of time in it. I'm pretty happy in how it came out, and even with the parts costs I feel I got a pretty good deal.

Great job. Looks FANTASTIC !!

looks great!!

Gorgeous grips.

Looks like a brand new pistol.
Great job!

Looks great dogmush. That 220 is good to go for another 20 years.

Cool!

Looks like a P220 that could be the pride of any safe.

Very nice!

Very nice. The grips are perfect on the ST

Awesome Work that you can be very proud of

Looks absolutely beautiful!!!! Love the grips.

Tell me about your setup for bead blasting?

Wow! That is NICE!

Thanks for posting! If I ever get the backlog in my garage caught up I'd like to do the same to mine!

quote:

Originally posted by hrcjon:
Tell me about your setup for bead blasting?

Sure. This is it:


I started with a Harbor Freight sandblaster.(Use a 25% off coupon) As with so many things from Harbor freight it's more of a starting point than a real tool.

I put some LED's and a cheap massage chair vibrating motor in it, along with a 12VDC power supply from Amazon. That's what the two switches on the lower left are. Then I added some ducting on the vacuum ports to make sure air moved from the front left to the rear right when the vacuum is on. You can see the duct in this pic, along with the LED's results.


Power supply and motor:


Then I built an Air Dryer out of 3" PVC. Dry air is absolutely critical to good media blasting. It's basically this young lady's design modified a little to fit my space requirements. I hard piped a regulator to ensure I don't have a brain fart and run 200psi shop air to the PVC. I use rechargeable silica desiccant balls.


On the first pic you can see a cheap shopvac I got from Amazon, a spare 5 gal bucket, and an Ebay cyclonic dust separator. They make up my two-stage dust remover. Air goes from the cabinet to the cyclonic which drops out the big stuff, then to the shop vac which filters out what's left. The silver box on the left leg of the stand is a router speed controller (also ebay) which allows me to adjust the shop-vac speed as needed. At full chooch it pulls a decent vacuum in the cabinet.

I fabricated the cart out of some steel I had lying around. If I had more room I'd have just put it on a bench, but I needed something mobile so I can work around it.

All in, it ran me like $225. The Clear PVC and some of the fittings weren't at Lowes and ordering them got a little pricey, but the dryer is what makes the whole thing work so well, and is worth it. It works way better than the Cyclone siphon cabinet I have at work.

I envy your mechanical abilities, dogmush. I can't change a danged light bulb that some drama doesn't ensue.

Those grips are fantastic. I love the P220.

The result looks great, I had hemmed and hawed over those P220's when I saw them and was too late. Glad to see one of them went to a good home

Nice results. Are those Hogue grips thicker than stock?

Looks Good ..

I bought one of those from Austin and have been looking forward to dressing it up some. Seeing yours lights a fire under my ass to do something cool with mine. Thank you