Easy Steps to Parkerizing Your Gun Parts at Home

Zinc phosphate Parkerizing protects your ferrous metals from corrosion. It also increases the steel’s resistance to wear. The resultant surface produces a gray matte finish that sticks with water-repelling lubricant. The overall protection that it gives the metal makes zinc phosphate Parkerizing the best option for protecting guns.

Here’s how you can parkerize your gun at home.

Clean and Degrease the Gun

Take out all the parts of the gun that you want to parkerize and clean them. You don’t want dirt to interfere with a consistent and solid coating. After that, degrease them thoroughly. You can use a brake cleaner, or any commercial degrease you prefer. Ensure that you wear nitrile gloves to prevent your skin oil from contacting the gun parts.

Rinse the Gun Parts

Rinsing the gun doesn’t mean spritzing it with a water bottle and leaving it. It means cleaning it thoroughly with water. Ensure that there’s nothing left on the metal surfaces. Use deionized water or a garden hose to accomplish this task. Follow all the rinsing steps to get a blemish-free and consistent end-product.

Dry the Gun Parts

While at it, don’t use anything that gets lint to the gun parts or a paper towel. Instead, use an air compressor to blow the gun parts off. If you don’t have one, let the gun parts air dry in a dust-free and clean environment. This step is essential as the step that comes after it doesn’t require moisture in the gun’s media or blasting cabinet.

Prepare the Gun Parts

Ensure that you plug all the parts you’re going to phosphate. For instance, if you’re going to phosphate the AR barrel, plug the gas port, the muzzle, and the chamber. Use the plugs that won’t fall at the slightest touch. Also, ensure that the plug is chemical resistant. Rubber is the best plug to use here.

Carry Out Media Blast

Blasting the media smoothens the rough surfaces and removes the old finish, thereby giving you a consistent and thick phosphate finish. You might skip this step if the gun had no previous finish. While at it, wear a respirator to avoid inhaling blasting media.

Rinse and Dry the Gun

Rinse the parts to remove any blasting media from its surfaces. After that, dry the parts because you’re about to dip the pieces in a phosphate bath.

Dip the Parts in a Phosphate Bath

First, fill a stainless steeled basin with 2/3 of water. Then heat this water until It reaches 150 to 160F. You can use a hot plate or any heating element to do so. After that, add a phosphate solution to the correct proportion. Then fill the basin with more water up to an operational level.

Proceed and toss some iron such as steel wool, iron chips, or scrap iron into the basin while maintaining a temperature of between 150 to 160F. Leave the iron there for several hours, then remove it and raise the temperature of the solution to 200 or 210F. Lastly, put all the gun parts into the bath for 10 to 15 minutes. After that, rinse and oil them.

To give your gun a clear and consistent finish, follow the steps mentioned above.