Gentlemen, polish your barrels!

id64

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Holy smokes, I did and it have added about 500 dollars to the gun appeal :)
C97 needs this treatment badly like no other barrels.

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Wow, nice and shiny!

A little off your topic but I've always wondered how the heck you guys get the white background in the pictures? Is there a special program needed or....??? It sure makes these types of pictures just jump right out at you. Good job!
 
Looks great and the pics are very good. What did you use to polish the barrel? I may have to do that on my SP-01.
 
Just go easy on the coarser grades of sanpaper. In fact go easy on them all but ESPECIALLY with the two coarser grades. The accuracy of the gun depends on how well the barrel is located. And the fit of the last bit of the barrel to the slide bushing is one of the bigger aspects.

It's why match grade 1911 bushings are a snug fit on the barrel and a really stiff fit in the slide.

If you can hold the slide back just a hair so the barrel is not locked into the slide lugs and if there's any significant looseness of the barrel in the bushing you don't want to do this polishing job. The extra looseness it'll cause would likely result in the gun not shooting as tight a grouping.
 
I agree. I am not planning to do this very often. In fact, I think once is enough. I was using 1500 and 2000 mainly with hands, so hopefully I didn't remove too much.


Just go easy on the coarser grades of sanpaper. In fact go easy on them all but ESPECIALLY with the two coarser grades. The accuracy of the gun depends on how well the barrel is located. And the fit of the last bit of the barrel to the slide bushing is one of the bigger aspects.

It's why match grade 1911 bushings are a snug fit on the barrel and a really stiff fit in the slide.

If you can hold the slide back just a hair so the barrel is not locked into the slide lugs and if there's any significant looseness of the barrel in the bushing you don't want to do this polishing job. The extra looseness it'll cause would likely result in the gun not shooting as tight a grouping.
 
If it's got machining marks the polishing compounds of those sorts will remove any black and will make the rough metal shiney. But it'll still be rough with all the marks, pits or other surface details it has now. They'll just be shiney details.

The problem is that you can't achieve a good polishing job without leveling the peaks down to match the valleys of the metal surface. If the barrel is smooth already it may only be a case of removing any color and brightening up the surface. But if it has a fairly coarse finish you need to remove metal all the way down to the lowest tolerable valleys. And that can easily amount to 3 to 5 thou of metal. Now that may not seem like much but on a basic duty style gun the barrel to bushing is likely already .002 to .004. Removing another .003 to .005 as part of a polishing treatment means there's likely .005 to .010 of clearance. The .005 is tolerable on a duty gun but would be way over what a good target gun should have. The .010 end of the range is terribly sloppy by any standard. It would likely give you a gun which shot "minute of barn door".

All in all it's not something I'd want to do to my guns. I know it looks sweet but I'll live with the factory finish on the barrel in order to keep things tight as possible.
 
NICE!!! :D


NOW do tell the secret of getting such KICK A$$ photos! Seriously, the lights you use, the background material and camera. I am simply astounded at the amount of high quality photographers here, that or the expensive cameras and lights I need to obtain, fantastic pictures! :)
 
NICE!!! :D


NOW do tell the secret of getting such KICK A$$ photos! Seriously, the lights you use, the background material and camera. I am simply astounded at the amount of high quality photographers here, that or the expensive cameras and lights I need to obtain, fantastic pictures! :)


I'll take a guess. The background looks to be paper towel. Lighting is a decent overhead light, fluorescent perhaps. Other than that, a nice camera with a tripod, a macro setting turned on, the f stop turned up a few notches and a quick shutter speed.
 
I'll take a guess. The background looks to be paper towel. Lighting is a decent overhead light, fluorescent perhaps. Other than that, a nice camera with a tripod, a macro setting turned on, the f stop turned up a few notches and a quick shutter speed.

You got all wrong :)

Background is a old rollup window shade.

They are 2 Nikon SB 900 flashes with white umbrellas and one SB 800 overhead. No tripod. Nikon D3s with 24-70 2.8 lens. :)

Shutter speed is 60. You are right about F stop - about 16-22.
 
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