hard chrome

[cnote]

$300 option. Looks great and prevents wear. Are there any other positives and I'm sure someone will have a negative point? Would I be better off spending the money on additional magazines?

High class problems!!!

Thanks for any input in advance.

[jasmap]

What's a negative of hardchrome? If you like it and can afford it then get it. I love it's durability and a good hardchrome looks good too.

[blkbrd]

Buy lots of mags as you may not be able to next year??

Hard chrome is great at preventing wear and for ease of cleanup.

I love it on my open gun, but my next limited gun will be ionbonded. The flash of the silver slide catches the sun with my limited gun. I have found I have better sight focus with a black gun.

[boz1911]

Buy lots of mags as you may not be able to next year??

Hard chrome is great at preventing wear and for ease of cleanup.

I love it on my open gun, but my next limited gun will be ionbonded. The flash of the silver slide catches the sun with my limited gun. I have found I have better sight focus with a black gun.

As much as I like the pimp-daddy versions, I will admit after shooting a blue gun now for a while, shooting my shiny chrome gun does pick up more glare and reflections. I'm also now thinking Ionbond for my next gun.

[Johann the Horrible]

If done incorrectly Hard Chrome can cause the gun to crack so when you go go for a guy that knows what he does.

[Joe4d]

If your ordering a new STI go ahead and have it done inhouse before you order it then you are only dealing with shipping it once. Plus if there is a problem it is all STI and they'll take care of you down the road. Saying all that my new STI is Blued. I will go for the ion bond next winter as I can deliver it myself.

[cnote]

Please help, what is the i bond all about. I read and hear about it, but don't know any particulars or who would be recommended. I live in northern IL.

[CMV]

cnote,

Look here: http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=46597

all kinds of ionbond info

[ebg3]

The only problem I have with ordering a gun hard-chromed is if you need to break any sharp edges or tweak anything with the thumb safety or grip safety. It might be better to get it blued, shoot it for awhile and then chrome it once you have it set up the way you like it.

[cnote]

Thanks CMV, i found that thread after i posted, rookie mistake. Thanks ebg3, after all the responses, i think i will buy it and shoot if for a while before making any final decisions on the finish. Plus, i can get some additional mags and worry about paying for the finish later.

Thank You

[mr1911]

I seem to remember ol' Jeff Cooper liking his frames hard chromed and his slides blued.

[Duane Thomas]

Two things to be aware of about hard chrome:

(1) It doesn't make the gun nearly as rust resistant as many people believe. You still have to maintain a hard chromed gun or you're going to get rust problems. It's not the chrome itself that rusts, but the material has little microcracks in it that can allow corrosion causing liquids (read: sweat) to get at the steel under the hard chrome. When that happens, you get this brown crud bubbling up from underneath the chrome, and it looks like hell when that happens.

(2) Chrome does add dimensionally to the steel. In other words, unless your gun starts out a bit sloppy, the hard chrome can decrease critical dimensions so much the gun is no longer reliable. On a typically sloppy factory gun, this may cause no problems. On a well-built, finely fit custom piece, typically what the smith does is build the gun "loose" in the critical dimensions, knowing the hard chrome will take up the slack. Even then there may be some final fitting that needs to be done after the smith receives the gun back after hard chroming.

Having said all that, I love hard chrome, and if you're absolutely set on the finish, I say have at it.

[Duane Thomas]

If done incorrectly Hard Chrome can cause the gun to crack so when you go go for a guy that knows what he does.

Unless there is an underlying flaw in the steel that the hard chrome process aggravates, the only time I've ever heard of hard chroming causing a gun to crack is when the gun has been hard chromed, stripped and re-hard chromed several times. As pistolsmith Steve Woods once explained it to me - himself repeating what he'd been told by the guy who owned a refinishing company - the hard chrome process leeches a bit of hydrogen out of the steel. Imagine the steel is the muddy bed of a dried-up creek, the water is gone but the mud is still all smooth and wet. Then the sun comes, dries out the mud, it begins to crack. That's what hydrogen embrittlement, at the extreme, can do to steel. With a single hard chrome treatment - and again, assuming no underlying flaw in the steel - this is no big deal as the amount of hydrogen embrittlement is small.

The problem comes with the guy who has his gun hard cromed, then decides, "You know, I really want a different grip safety." So the frame gets stripped, the grip safety fitted, and the gun re-hard chromed. Then he says, "You know, I really want a checkered frontstrap." The same sort of thing happens over and over again, and eventually the severely hydrogen embrittled steel cracks.

Rule of thumb: Get everything on the gun exactly the way you want it, then have the gun hard chromed once.

[wide45]

I suggest you google hydrogen embrittlement. I don't think Duane has it right.

Baking the parts in an oven, right after chroming, removes the hydrogen that would otherwise cause embrittlement.

[Duane Thomas]

Thanks, Rich. I stand corrected, it's not that hydrogen is removed, it's that it's added. My understanding - and I could live with being corrected again - is that the heat treatment after hard chroming does remove most of the hydrogen, however there is enough left over that, over numerous strippings and re-hard chromings, it can build up to damaging levels. And if it turns out I'm wrong on that, I'll be just as happy, as long as I know the truth. As Robert Heinlein wrote, "To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods."

Here's a link to the Wikipedia article on hydrogen embrittlement:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement

What we need here is some engineer type who owns and/or works at a refinishing business to give us the definitive word.

Anyone....anyone? Bueller....Bueller?

[mr1911]

I seem to remember having to "cook out" or "de-gas" chrome-plated forklift-forks when I worked for a machine shop that also did industrial chrome plating.

Various re-heating processes do cuase re-alignment of the metal molicules in a part, either causing hardening or softening, when I worked as a tool&die machinist I got a set of dies made from tool steel that had been heat treated improperly and the metal literaly,...no joke... fragmented like volcanic glass when stressed.