What happens when you neglect basic care of your firearm. Take a look above. Customer brings in this basic Mossberg 500 12ga and asks what we can do with it. Lets look at the options (from cheapest to most expensive). In all cases, bead blasting of the surface would be the minimal prep.
Paint it from a rattle can. Very cheap, but definitely not durable by any means.
Coat with any one of a number of durable epoxy based finishes (cerakote, duracoat, alumahyd).
Hot Caustic Blue (everything except the receiver which is Aluminum)
In reality option 3 really was not on the table, the cost of the bluing salts alone would far exceed the value of the firearm (we don’t consider bluing unless we have at least 3 firearms that need to be blued). The customer chose to have us coat the firearm with Duracoat. After stripping completely appart and bead blasting all of the metal components the end result of the process is.
Why chose Duracoat over Cerakote. Simply cost. While Cerakote has a slightly harder finish, Duracoat is about 60% less expensive (there are others which are cost less, however they do not give the best results).
How long does it take for a firearm to get into this condition? Obviously, there is a lot of rust and pitting on this example. However, we performed the same project on a friends sons 20ga Mossberg 500 (unfortunately no pictures) which he threw in the corner after hunting and forgot about it for over a year. This firearm was close to the level of the one featured here. The pitting was not as bad (although there were clearly pits formed that required more prep work to smooth out – the featured firearm, the customer opted to not bother with having the pits smoothed out, so all that was done was bead blast and degrease). It does not take long for a firearm to get in pretty nasty condition, so always dry your gun after taking it out, and apply a light coat of oil to the surface to protect. Store in a dry area. I throw some big desiccant bags into the safe, and I also put the desiccant packets that come in various products into a bowl in the bottom of the safe (they are free so why not).
What would a job like this be estimated as (at time of completion):
The material cost is ~$85 (Duracoat plus blasting media)
Preparation for coating ~1 hour at $65
Actual coating ~30min $32.50
Total pre-tax cost estimate = 182.50
Using Cerakote,
Material cost ~$145
Preparation ~1 hour at $65
Coating time ~1 hour at $65 (applying Cerakote is quite a bit more involved)
Total pre-tax cost estimate = $275