Our only local smith offered to parkerize a rifle for about half what he charges to blue. He prefers it and stated since he can control the bead blast prior to refinish it will look almost the same as bluing.

More I think about it I had him "matte" finish a 22-250 once and he was cheap but it looked more gray than normal, still ok but not dark. Maybe it was parkerized and he didn't say. I didn't ask.

THOUGHTS?

Bluing you have to spend alot of time polishing all the parts and into the nooks and cranies, bead blasting is much faster. The old saying "time is money" still hold ture

Guess I should have been more clear both are matte finish. He did say that he would have less prep time but maybe he didn't totally understand either.

David,

It really depends on how you will like what you get with a park job. If you've seen military rifles that are park'd, you know what your rifle will look like. For nice sporters, I like a matte blue. But, I have a couple of Rem 513 series rifles that are park'd. I don't mind it with those rifles.
For me, nothing beats a rust blued, matte, sporter.

Don

Parkerizing is an actual built up “coating” for exterior metal, not to be used for close fitting parts with tight tolerances.

Nothing that tight on a factory 700..grin...

Just having him do the barreled action and bolt shroud. It's a cheapy build I did but the darn thing shoots like a house afire.

Dave

Maybe your 700’s are different than the ones I own.

Aren’t the factory shouds aluminum? I wasn’t aware that aluminum could be parkerized.

Could be....

Given any thought to an applied finish like Cerakote? I've seen some beautiful results from that kind of technique, and supposedly very durable, and relatively cheap.

To a poor boy like me $175 plus shipping isn't cheap. Plus this whole rifle was done "on the cheap". Used up LVSF stock that took me about 3 trys to get the old bedding out and new correct, used SA that happened to have a fantastic trigger, a A&B barrel in 280Rem threaded for a mouser which was redone in 7-08 and installed. Very first three shot group (shots 3,4 and 5) made one ragged hole. See pic