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I've done a fair amount of parkerizing with Lauer zinc phosphate solution and I've always been pleased with the results. But not too long ago I decided to try manganese phosphate for something a little darker. I went on Ebay (mistake?) and found some of this solution for sale:
So I decided to try it out and man the results were terrible. The coating just rubbed right off! So I complain to the seller and he just accuses me of not following the directions (which I did). As I mentioned, I've parkerized with Lauer solution before and it works great every time. So I responded saying that I did follow the directions and he did not reply after that. I sent another email a few days later asking for an answer, and he eventually just sends a rude little reply back to me. Not wanting to deal with the jackass, I just leave him a negative feedback and that's the end of that.
Fast forward to a couple of days ago. I decide to refinish the gas block on my AR, so I take it off and blast away the old finish. Now for some reason, I got the wonderful idea to give that horrible parkerizing solution another shot. Why? I have no idea. So I heat some up and suspend the gas block along with another part I had just made in the solution. 40 minutes later, everything looks fine until I pull the parts out and wash them off. Well surprise surprise the finish comes right off again! Not only that, but I noticed that the dimensions of the parts had been altered by about 0.001-0.002 on every surface! The inside diameter of the gas block was increased by about 0.003, and was now a looser fit than before. It used to have an ID of 0.908", but the parkerizing ate away a little bit of the metal and made the ID 0.911". The taper pins, which I had also tried to parkerize, became smaller as well and went in way too deep when I tried to install them. Needless to say, I was very mad. I panicked for a while, thinking the gas block was a loss (it's a uniquely sized gas block for a .50 Beowulf barrel, and cannot be replaced easily). But then I decide to just blast the splotchy black crap off of it and try again with my old Lauer solution. Lo and behold, it came out lovely. I went to the hardware store and got two taper pins, larger and longer than regular AR taper pins, and trimmed both ends for a perfect fit. The gas block was tight after I installed the pins, so I'm gonna have to assume that the slightly increased clearance between the block and the barrel won't hurt anything (fingers crossed).
Moral of the story? Sometimes you find bargains on Ebay, only to discover that the product is of very low quality. And at other times, you might find high quality items but end up paying a little more for them. Well in this case, I bought something that was neither cheap nor of good quality, and it almost ruined my gas block. **** that.
So I decided to try it out and man the results were terrible. The coating just rubbed right off! So I complain to the seller and he just accuses me of not following the directions (which I did). As I mentioned, I've parkerized with Lauer solution before and it works great every time. So I responded saying that I did follow the directions and he did not reply after that. I sent another email a few days later asking for an answer, and he eventually just sends a rude little reply back to me. Not wanting to deal with the jackass, I just leave him a negative feedback and that's the end of that.
Fast forward to a couple of days ago. I decide to refinish the gas block on my AR, so I take it off and blast away the old finish. Now for some reason, I got the wonderful idea to give that horrible parkerizing solution another shot. Why? I have no idea. So I heat some up and suspend the gas block along with another part I had just made in the solution. 40 minutes later, everything looks fine until I pull the parts out and wash them off. Well surprise surprise the finish comes right off again! Not only that, but I noticed that the dimensions of the parts had been altered by about 0.001-0.002 on every surface! The inside diameter of the gas block was increased by about 0.003, and was now a looser fit than before. It used to have an ID of 0.908", but the parkerizing ate away a little bit of the metal and made the ID 0.911". The taper pins, which I had also tried to parkerize, became smaller as well and went in way too deep when I tried to install them. Needless to say, I was very mad. I panicked for a while, thinking the gas block was a loss (it's a uniquely sized gas block for a .50 Beowulf barrel, and cannot be replaced easily). But then I decide to just blast the splotchy black crap off of it and try again with my old Lauer solution. Lo and behold, it came out lovely. I went to the hardware store and got two taper pins, larger and longer than regular AR taper pins, and trimmed both ends for a perfect fit. The gas block was tight after I installed the pins, so I'm gonna have to assume that the slightly increased clearance between the block and the barrel won't hurt anything (fingers crossed).
Moral of the story? Sometimes you find bargains on Ebay, only to discover that the product is of very low quality. And at other times, you might find high quality items but end up paying a little more for them. Well in this case, I bought something that was neither cheap nor of good quality, and it almost ruined my gas block. **** that.
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