Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Glock finishes?

So I have some different glocks and noticed that there seems to be different finishes on them. My old G21 is different then my SF 20. What did they do and when?

For a number of years following their initial introduction, Gen 1 & Gen 2 Glocks had a phosphate finish generically referred to as Parkerizing.

Along about Gen 3, they started using an "applied" finish of some variety (e.g. Cerakote, GunKote, DuraCoat, etc.) and have continued with that practice to this day.

All the Glocks I've messed were not Parkerized, they use Tenifer.

TENIFER WIKI

Glock has used TENNIFER on their pistols since day one.I won't try to go into detail,but they've never used anything else.

Hmmm? Looks like they switched from TENIFER to MELONITE, BOTH NITRO CARB finishes. A top coat is applied for appearance.

Genius, the Tennifer is UNDER the black phosphate/cerrakote or whatever they top coat is. 41mag has probably forgotten more about pistols than you'll ever know.

Jesus, Tenifer is not a friggin' finish. It is a surface hardening treatment that causes ZERO change to the metal's appearance. What is being referenced is the black finish applied over it. Yes, they did start with what looks like parkerizing but I always heard it referred to as black oxide. The newer finish is definitely different.

Tenifer is just a metal "treatment" and does not produce a cosmetic feature to the slide. Simply stated, it's just a cheap and inexpensive way to surface harden soft alloys.

You can wear the finish (whatever the finish happens to be) off the slide, but you can't wear the Tenifer treatment off the metal.


Salt bath ferritic nitrocarburizing is also known as liquid ferritic nitrocarburizing or liquid nitrocarburizing[8] and is also known by the trademarked names Tufftride[2] and Tenifer.[9]

The most simple form of this process is encompassed by the trademarked Melonite process, also known as Meli 1. It is most commonly used on steels, sintered irons, and cast irons to lower friction and improve wear and corrosion resistance.


Glock Ges.m.b.H., an Austrian firearms manufacturer, utilizes the Tenifer process to protect the barrels and slides of the pistols they manufacture. The finish on a Glock pistol is the third and final hardening process. It is 0.05 mm (0.0020 in) thick and produces a 64 Rockwell C hardness rating via a 500 �C (932 �F) nitride bath. The final matte, non-glare finish meets or exceeds stainless steel specifications, is 85% more corrosion resistant than a hard chrome finish, and is 99.9% salt-water corrosion resistant. After the Tenifer process, a black Parkerized finish is applied and the slide is protected even if the finish were to wear off. Besides Glock several other pistol manufacturers, including Smith & Wesson and Springfield Armory, Inc., also use ferritic nitrocarburizing for finishing parts like barrels and slides but they call it Melonite finish. Heckler & Koch use a nitrocarburizing process they refer to as Hostile Environment. Pistol manufacturer Caracal International L.L.C. uses ferritic nitrocarburizing for finishing parts such as barrels and slides with the plasma-based Plasox process.