Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Series 70 Combat Commander

Were the "white metal" Series 70 Colt Combat Commanders stainless steel or electroless nickel plated, please?

My Series 70 Commander was electroless nickel plated. When I had it rebuilt, I had that changed to a brushed hard chrome.

Jim,

The Combat Commander was available in both stainless and nickel. You can usually determine the material with a magnet.

JOG,

Hold a magnet up to the slide or frame of a stainless Combat Commander...I think you'll find that it sticks.

GunGeek,

Yeah...but it sticks different... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/help.gif" alt="" />

My bad. I just did the magnet thing - utter failure. On my way back to the computer to I was trying to think of an excuse to minimize my groveling and this is the best I can come up with:

My flashy new avatar is at fault.

The body of a Zippo is made out of chrome-plated brass except during WWII and the Korean War. Brass was going to shell cases and the like so Zippo used steel bodies and sprayed on a black paint. After the wars, Zippo chrome-plated the steel lighters they had in stock and sold them as regular Zippos. These transition lighters have some additional collector value, but they can be hard to tell apart from chrome-plated brass...unless a guy uses a magnet. I perform this lil' task a few times a month.

Sooo, my Zippo avatar OBVIOUSLY infected my brain with the nonsense that stainless handguns are non-magnetic.

How am I doin'?

You're doing great...Got me ROTFLMAO...

Don't feel bad, I thought the same thing until some other smarty-pants came along and told me to stick a magnet to the gun.

Before taking a look, I guessed that you had an avatar that was one of the beer logos..... The story you rendered is much better.

Hmmm...if it was a beer logo, I just coulda confessed to being bombed.

If it is plated you should be able to tell on the inside of it, wear and/or discoloration going to kind of a faded brass color. The stainless will be uniform in color every where.

Thanks, gentlemen.

Cordially,

Jim Stewart

I get confused by a lot of things, including gun manufacturers nomenclature.

But, if you're Combat Commander was actually made in the 70's, it's electroless nickle. I loved mine.