I am getting ready to build a couple of AR-9's.I will be starting with 80% lowers and my daughter wants her's to be pink !!

My questions are 1) which finish would be better and 2) should I mill first or have finished first ?

Thanks, Derrell

Mill first.

Anodizing would be my choice if I were doing it. You can get a pink dye that’s almost hot pink.

Cerakote could be applied too thick, which can create problems.

mill it out before anodizing. If a mistake is made in milling, then you just toss the whole thing and have not wasted your time/money anodizing.

By the way, your daughter is doing her own milling, right

(Disclaimer, I'm not legal expert, but the BATFE made some statement that you gotta complete your own 80% lower. Someone like RogueJSK might have a better answer on that)

And I apologize for the drift. This is not what you had asked

Please post topics in the appropriate area.

This is a complicated question, despite the simple nature of it. First anodizing is way better as a finish. But are you going to anodize it yourself? If so then I would mill and then anodize. If you are not going to do it yourself then you will have much greater difficulty (or at least I did) in getting someone to anodize firearms in a small quantities and unserialized ones were just plain not possible in my area. Same for ceracote, the firearm finishers in my area would not touch a finished 80% receiver.
If you haven't milled them they are just hunks of metal and you should be able to find someone to process them. But overall I think the best strategy is to just do it yourself with these.

FWIW.. a small "boutique" manufacturer once told me he anodizes before he taps the grips screw. At the moment I don't remember the reason 100%, maybe something to do with maintaining the "sharpness" of the threads.


(I learned this because my very expensive lower came without the grip screw hole tapped. lol They admitted that they screwed up. I did it myself rather than send it back)

Anodizing is the hardier finish in terms of protection.

However, it is very difficult to match anodizing between batches.

It sounds like you only have an 80% lower right now. It's likely that if you send the pieces one at a time, you will wind up with an FN-SCAR-FDE-like hodgepodge of different colors. If your daughter is picky, that might defeat the purpose of coloring in the first place.

If you plan to build an entire rifle from this lower, do you want only the lower to be pink?

If you don't have all the parts now (or they are of such a construction that they cannot be anodized, like plastic hand guards), I would go with cerakote.

For your application, I would recommend cerakote because of uniformity. Also, she may not beat it up to the point where anodizing has any real benefit over cerakote. IIRC, cerakote even has a "magpul pink" that matches the color of Magpul's pink furniture.

When I go for color matching, I will have the lower, the upper, the buffer tube, and free-float handguard all cerakoted at the same time to avoid color differences.

Just Cerakote it.

Unless you have access to anodizing equipment. It's going to be expensive probably to send off one piece for service.

Cerakote and be done.