A recent Subscriber bought a Pedersoli flintlock that was coated with ceramic coating called Cekote which the manufacturer claims d--m near permanent.
Has anyone out there run into this product?
Is it some sort of permanent bluing?
I never liked bluing on an antique style rifle as it
is like grandma in a bikini.
Would like any news on this from that heat sea of knowledge out there.
Yes, well it might just be
"like a grandma in a bikini"....
Decades ago, Parkerizing was the "new" finish on the block, over bluing and browning, for modern firearms. It was durable compared to bluing, dull like matte-gray paint, and applied well to metal surfaces without the detailed prep that modern bluing required. So it was often cheaper. I have a custom modern rifle that was a project build that was done in parkerizing. It was "better" to an extent for all-weather applications of firearms, but it had its drawbacks, as different quality steels would have different colors when the process was done, so my project rifle is two-tone with the action one color and the barrel slightly different.
Along came baked on enamels for metals, and now there are ceramic coatings, as others have written. They are indeed more durable than bluing (which started out at "charcoal bluing" and transformed into "chemical bluing" btw) or browning or even parkerizing. Cerakote has an advantage over the traditional coating as it mimics the two "modern" coatings of chemical-blue and parkerizing quite well. It deals quite well with extreme heat, and all sorts of weird things may be done to the metal as the colors are up to the owner and the technician. Could it mimic rust-browning? It's quite possible. Close enough to be hard to tell if it was true, rust browning..., that too is possible, but I think the uniform appearance without any small differences at certain points on the barrel or the lock would be a clue it was not true rust-browning, but who knows what a talented technician could do.
I don't see our guns as utilitarian, and as many of us have expressed in the past, and as others have expressed on other forums when complaints come in about cleaning or "which BP substitute propellant is the cleanest"...., "
If you don't like cleaning a dirty gun, then you shouldn't be doing black powder."
LD