Process for Durocoating

The hardest part is the design, what do you want?  This Heritage made it easy.  The grip is a beautiful stained wood.  The metal is tarnished, worn and dull.

The firearm is inexpensive, but great fun to shoot.  The grip is an easy hold for small hands.  It is lightweight but a 22 so there is not a click, just enough to be fun.  This is a perfect gift for a new shooter.

What we want to do here is highlight the features.  The beautiful grips stand out to the point what you see are the grips nothing else.  We want to highlight the grips even further, but bring the entire gun into view.

The firearm is broken down completely.  This separates the parts so they can easily be airbrushed complimentary colors.

Each part is sandblasted to get rid of blueing, grease or other coating.  The blasting also leave a microscopic rough surface to give the paint something to hold on to. Durocoat is part paint and part epoxy so it sticks tight.

After sandblasting, the gun gets one more degreasing and then hung ready to be painted.  The paint is applied with an air brush in light layers.  Each layer is allowed to dry.  Bright colors get a coat of white under them.

If a design is to be applied, stencils are cut.  They are laid gently over the base coat and sprayed.  For camouflage, it takes time since many different stencils and colors are used.  The more custom the design, the longer the gun takes to be finished.

This entire process takes at least a day and sometimes can take up to a week once the process is started.