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Titanium Carbo-Nitride (TiCN) coating on 2011


Maxximuss

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I recently purchased a STI Eagle 2011. The gun came with a significant amount of holster wear on the bluing. What are your thoughts on the different hard metallic and PVD coating? I am not a fan of Cerakote, especially on 1911 or 2011's. I have been in contact with Calico Coating out of Denver, NC. The have numerous tempting options but I have found special interest in the Titanium Carbo-Nitride (TiCN). It is described as the following: "Calico Titanium Carbo-Nitride (TiCN) has the highest lubricitiy of all the TiN coatings - making it an excellent choice as a dry film lubricate where improved hardness and wear resistance beyond standard Calico TiN is needed. TiCN is normally applied to steels, hardened steel and aluminum materials. TiCN is an excellent coating when working against bronze, brass and plastic, therefore, it a good choice for stamping, punching, and forming."

The color is described as bronze. I requested pictures of this coating and will post them.

The price on this coating would be $200 for the slide and barrel (as long as we have four getting coated). They offer other coatings such as the popular DLC. I believe I am going to do the small controls in DLC.

Do you have any other recommendation for companies? What other coating do you know that will make my gun look like a "shiny penny"?

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Tagging this for future interest. I too am intrigued by the PVD coatings. I am in the process of a build with my local gunsmith and I am wanting to do barrel, hammer, safety, other small parts in TiN and the rest of the gun in some type of TiAlN or other PVD coating. It will be a couple months before I am ready to coat anything, but let me know if the timing works and you need someone else to fill a slot to get the minimum required.

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Calico Coatings send me a picture of a bolt carrier group coated in TiCN. I can't figure out how to post the picture here. If you want to see the color send me a message and I will email it. to you. (Or if you know how to post pictures, I'll email it to you, and you can post it.)

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I sent an email to titaniumgun.com and got a pretty quick response regarding my inquiry into doing TiAlN. Even though their website only shows the TiNi gold coating, they do others. Might be worth a call or email to them to see if they can accomodate a TiCN coating as well.

http://titaniumgun.com/

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I contacted Titaniumgun.com also, they have a comprehensive list on pricing. They said it is 10% more to do TiCN. They describe their TiCN color as a light purple color. It appears different companies have different "recipes" that yield different colors. I am looking for more of a bronze/copper color. What are your thoughts?

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The problem with that place is that they want to you do all the surface prep yourself and you have to ship to them from an FFL. Annoying.

I'd be interested in seeing someone's final results though. Copper would be awesome.

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Calico stated the following in an email to me: "We process these coatings two different ways. We can SuperMicro Finish to give a brilliant surface or we use a very fine aluminum oxide blast to create a uniform satin finish. "

I like the thought of that more than doing to prep myself, even if it costs $25.

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The problem with that place is that they want to you do all the surface prep yourself and you have to ship to them from an FFL. Annoying.

I'd be interested in seeing someone's final results though. Copper would be awesome.

Shipping from an ffl is not a big deal to me, but the surface prep might be a deal breaker. A finish is only as good as the surface prep and I dont trust my skills in this regard. Even having someone local do the surface prep then sending to tiguns seems a little less than ideal. I will have to check out calico.

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Yes it does. I'm in the process of building an open gun and was really leaning towards polishing the stainless frame and grip but I am really thinking all parts except for barrel, safeties, trigger, hammer, slide racket etc will get a dark Pvd coating similar to this.

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I was on the phone with David Adams at Calico Coatings today. The turn around will be 2-3 weeks maximum. You can do your own prep work or have them do it (as described above). They are a FFL and can receive frames and lowers. The cost is $650 per batch of TiCN. It is whatever can fit into the chamber. They can fit 20 bolt carrier groups per batch (to get a general idea on chamber size). I am going to send him the dimensions of a 5" 2011 slide and barrel. It appears we should be able to fit at least 3-4 slides, barrels, and small controls making it about $162-200 for everything minus the frame.

If you want DLC the cost per batch is $1000. I am leaning towards DLC on my small controls and the slide and barrel in TiCN.

Let me know if you are interested, I am looking at putting the order within the next 2 weeks. If you just want one piece done (barrel, slide, BCG, controls) let me know what it is and send me a picture next to a ruler for size reference.

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Deposition Temperature: 350 to 500º C is pretty standard for PVD coatings. I haven't heard of any problems from the heat applied during the coating process.

I agree with RippSpeed about DLC. DLC is harder and I think it is the best black coating out there. I am looking at doing TiCN because of price and color, I have plenty of black guns.

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