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IONBOND Dealers


openmike

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With the closing of IonBond's custom shop, we have been working at handling the custom work and finding other dealers nation wide that are interested in doing the processing also. I should have a few more "dealers" ready by the end of the year, as it is part of my to do list for our Christmas break, but for now, we are it.

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I've heard that Jeff Abernathy in Charlotte, NC is also setup with someone who does this coating.

FYI, Ionbond is a brand name, but there are other companies that apply the same type of coating. I don't know if anyone else is setup as well as Springer to handle this. I worry about taking a collection of parts to a coating company that doesn't know anything about firearms, or how the parts function.

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I've heard that Jeff Abernathy in Charlotte, NC is also setup with someone who does this coating.

FYI, Ionbond is a brand name, but there are other companies that apply the same type of coating. I don't know if anyone else is setup as well as Springer to handle this. I worry about taking a collection of parts to a coating company that doesn't know anything about firearms, or how the parts function.

IonBond's DiamondBLACK (DLC or Tribicote) is a proprietary process, and there is only one place that does it in North America currently. They are not taking "collections of parts" to coat. The preparation process is very specific and only done on gun parts by people who know the parts and their function.

Thanks for the kind words guys, and we appreciate the business.

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I've heard that Jeff Abernathy in Charlotte, NC is also setup with someone who does this coating.

FYI, Ionbond is a brand name, but there are other companies that apply the same type of coating. I don't know if anyone else is setup as well as Springer to handle this. I worry about taking a collection of parts to a coating company that doesn't know anything about firearms, or how the parts function.

IonBond's DiamondBLACK (DLC or Tribicote) is a proprietary process, and there is only one place that does it in North America currently. They are not taking "collections of parts" to coat. The preparation process is very specific and only done on gun parts by people who know the parts and their function.

Thanks for the kind words guys, and we appreciate the business.

So are the other people offering DLC just reselling it? Because there are a bunch of folks coating things with diamond like carbon.

Or is it just a slightly different process than the other guys?

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I've heard that Jeff Abernathy in Charlotte, NC is also setup with someone who does this coating.

FYI, Ionbond is a brand name, but there are other companies that apply the same type of coating. I don't know if anyone else is setup as well as Springer to handle this. I worry about taking a collection of parts to a coating company that doesn't know anything about firearms, or how the parts function.

IonBond's DiamondBLACK (DLC or Tribicote) is a proprietary process, and there is only one place that does it in North America currently. They are not taking "collections of parts" to coat. The preparation process is very specific and only done on gun parts by people who know the parts and their function.

Thanks for the kind words guys, and we appreciate the business.

So are the other people offering DLC just reselling it? Because there are a bunch of folks coating things with diamond like carbon.

Or is it just a slightly different process than the other guys?

Yes, there are other companies that offer DLC. I'm not sure what it is about Ionbond's process that makes it proprietary, but they are not the only place in the US where you can get this coating. They are the only one that I am aware of that works with a gunsmith.

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I've heard that Jeff Abernathy in Charlotte, NC is also setup with someone who does this coating.

FYI, Ionbond is a brand name, but there are other companies that apply the same type of coating. I don't know if anyone else is setup as well as Springer to handle this. I worry about taking a collection of parts to a coating company that doesn't know anything about firearms, or how the parts function.

IonBond's DiamondBLACK (DLC or Tribicote) is a proprietary process, and there is only one place that does it in North America currently. They are not taking "collections of parts" to coat. The preparation process is very specific and only done on gun parts by people who know the parts and their function.

Thanks for the kind words guys, and we appreciate the business.

So are the other people offering DLC just reselling it? Because there are a bunch of folks coating things with diamond like carbon.

Or is it just a slightly different process than the other guys?

I'm sure there are similar coatings, but from what they have told me their process is proprietary. We have a IonBond facility that coats knives for the "big boys" here in Bend and I'm told the cost of locating a machine is in the millions of dollars range, so it isn't something you can do unless you do a LOT of coatings. They TiN coat slot machines here also. I got lucky, and they coat my parts with the CRC coating they use on the knives, but all the DiamondBLACK is done in Greensboro.

DLC is a common term for the type of coating, the DiamondBLACK (Tribicote 40/41) is their version of it.

There are many people who use the coating and call it different names also. I can't list the names of large manufactures who use it, but they do a lot of coating on gun parts, but you would know all the big names. They have many level of other PVD coatings that they also do for manufacturers.

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Yes, there are other companies that offer DLC. I'm not sure what it is about Ionbond's process that makes it proprietary, but they are not the only place in the US where you can get this coating. They are the only one that I am aware of that works with a gunsmith.

Well, they only have one plant in North America that dose the coating, and they say they own the right to the process they use, so they might be similar, but they tell me they are not the same. A lot of the similar coatings are applied at temperatures too high for gun parts.

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  • 2 months later...

We had a representative from Ionbond here in the shop this week to help us with some problems we've been having, so I thought I would add a little more info and clarification to one of my earlier posts.

The Ionbond coating is very similar to the DLC coating that lots of companies apply, but it is not the same thing. The DLC (Diamond Like Coating) is extremely hard. One of the problems with DLC is its ability to adhere. If it doesn't completely encompass the entire part, it can start to peel at the edge. When that starts to happen you now have super hard flakes of material moving around and chewing up the metal it is meant to protect. DLC also requires that the part be polished to a mirror finish to keep the coating attached. The Ionbond process (they have several different processes, Ionbond is just the company name) uses a softer underlayment that aids in keeping the final layer attached to the metal. Softer is a relative term. Anyone who has a gun coated in Ionbond can tell you that the stuff is extremely tough.

I hope this clears up some confusion, I know I felt like I understood the differences a lot better after talking to him.

Scott

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  • 5 months later...

Ryan Flynn has opened up his own shop now and is doing a bunch of different coatings Aquilla Creek Gunsmithing in East bend NC. He just finished working on a PPC revolver for me and did a awesome job on it,great gunsmith, just did a teflon moly coating on it but the work he did was flawless..

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