Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Black Oxide VS. Cerakote

What exactly is Black Oxide and is it worth the effort? My M70 is getting a facelift and a local fella offers this service as well a normal rebluing . The end result Im looking for is a matte black finish, if that matters.

Black oxide is the technical name for hot salts bath "bluing", the traditional finish on guns since the mid 1930's.

The look of the blue job is strictly determined by the metal finish. Matt is easily made by bead blasting the parts before bluing. Gunsmiths like it because it is fast and easy to do. A professional polish job to the mirror finish some like is much more labor intensive.

RAN

Well ain't that some schit.....

This one is gloss now, and I'm done with gloss, cept O/U's.

Cerakote is durable and used by a number of gun manufacturers.

Black Oxide (or black parkerizing) is a finish that doesn't provide any protection from weather or wear. It provides a surface which holds oil fairly well, but requires maintenance to prevent rust or corrosion. Cerakote or DuraCoat would provide protection from weather and wear with a huge variety of colors and sheen, from gloss to matte. No surface oil maintenance is required for these coatings. Properly prepped and applied, they are both excellent coatings.

if you do go Cerakote, don't go "matte" black. It is very rough and shows every scratch and dust sticks to it. Go with "satin" or some other color completely. I am in love with the Tungsten color, but don't have anything done in that color yet.

Good to know, trying to justify ceracote at 3x the cost of bluing....

DuraCoat "Black Oxide" is a perfect color. It is a satin matte. We can coat a rifle for the same or less than most blue jobs.

My last gun was done in Black Ice teflon. I like it better than Cerakote. Seems like a thinner coating, and it is very smooth. Just sent off two sets of rings to have done. The only limiting factor is color choices, I believe you can get light and dark brown, OD green, and black.

What's the difference between Ceracote and Duracoat? Dang, throw in Teflon this stuff never stops.....

I believe cerakote is a ceramic coating, Duracoat is epoxy(?) and Teflon is Teflon. I think Duracoat is the weakest option.

All the two component paints are either epoxy or polyurethane for the base resin. Cerakote appears to have ceramic microspheres in it for extra wear resistance. They are all PAINT. Anything glued on can be chipped off.

Bluing and anodizing are hard oxide films grown from the base metal and are molecularly bonded to the metal making them very resistant to wear if not corrosion ( bluing).

So, the various chemical coatings(paints) help with corrosion protection but are mechanically weak. Bluing is wear resistant but is not very good corrosion wise. That leaves the plated films like electroless nickel and hard chrome. They are hard, bonded well to the base metal, and rust proof. However the color is wrong for lots of people. Maybe the optimum finish is
nickel or chrome plate top-coated with your choice of the various paints to get the right color.

RAN

When the surface is prepared properly and the DuraCoat is applied properly and cured, I find it very difficult to remove, even with a sand blaster.

Use Dura-Coat UV , if you're going to use Dura-Coat , it cures harder than regular Dura-Coat . Dura-Coat has more colors , than all the others put together , and it's actually produced by a company that's in the firearms business ! They have heat cured finishes too .

I actually like KG better than Cerakote. Same stuff just seems to get harder when baked on. If you use flat black IMO if you take a rag with just a little gun oil one it and wipe it down after it cools it helps to not show any finger prints and dirt near as bad.

I use the H-146 graphite black by the gallon. Never any complaints with scratching or dust. All the H series Cerakote colors are the same in scratch resistance. I have a hand full of tools we coated and some cull barrels for people to beat on and they are incredibly tough. As long as you don't actually gouge out metal it is very hard to even leave a mark.

Sounds like the prep was done too rough and this will cause exactly what you are describing. Properly applied Cerakote is .0005" to .001" max and is the toughest of the coatings available. I can't stress the importance of using factory Certified applicators.