I want to take the "black" off my glock barrel.

[Made Man]

I like the look of a silver barrel in the black tennifer coated slide but i dont want to buy a new barrel and have messed up serial numbers, i want the slide, barrel, and reciever to match as they do now. What do u guys recommend? Think I could just take a Dremel with a polishing pad and rub it shiney? Or is this whole idea crappy? I need feedback please.

[Handy]

You can polish the black oxide off, leaving the heat treated metal behind. I would do it by hand with Scotch Brite pads or something else that isn't going to cut very deep. Using a polisher risks rounding some of the critical dimensions off the barrel, destroying accuracy.

You might also try a chemical "Blue and Rust remover", but I doubt that will work. For a few dollars, that would be my first try, though.

[JohnKSa]

The black coating is not tenifer, it's there primarily for anti-glare/cosmetics. As long as you don't sandblast or use some other aggressive method, you should be able to remove the black coating without affecting the tenifer underneath. Some folks have posted on GlockTalk about doing this--you may be able to get some hints over there.

[gunrunner]

a good rouge or rubbing compound and elbow gease will do it nice and slow. if you want cheap . if you want really nice, send it for hardchrome finish. barrel only is like 30.00 and will actually help the gun.

[Tim R]

Just buy an after market barrel and be done with it. Once the blue is removed off the barrel, it's gone forever. This way you could always put it back.

[Made Man]

thanks for the replys. U know how the slide makes marks on the barrel, I dont really like that so i was just gonna remove them by removing the black coating. And i knew the barrel was not tennifer coated just the slide.

[abelew]

The suggestion about getting a different barrel is a good idea, as polishing off the finish might degrade resale value. However, the only person who really sees the barrel where the finish gets rubbed off, is you. Its covered by the slide most of the time, so cosmetically i never worried about it. Now, that said, if you are going to polish the barrel, why not just send the slide and barrel into a refinishing joint, and get a neat dual-tone pistol.

[Handy]

Unless alergic to elbow grease, I don't see why anyone would chrome a Tennifered barrel. Not quite like having your Gold Medal bronzed, but still a fairly pointless expense.

[Made Man]

Yeah i seen somewhere(can't remember where) that a hard chromed barrel was $50, that isn't too bad of a price. I just don't want to part with my Glock for two weeks turn-around time, its the only one i got.

[JohnKSa]

The barrel IS tenifer treated.

Tenifer is a metal treatment and leaves the metal a dull gray color.

The black colored overcoating is NOT tenifer. The overcoating is applied OVER the tenifer. If you polish off the black overcoating, you will still have the tenifer left on the barrel unless you use a very aggressive polishing/stripping technique such as sandpaper or sandblasting.

Furthermore, for a reasonable fee, Glock will re-apply the black colored overcoating to the barrel if you decide later that you don't like the polished look.

Polish the black off if you don't like it. You're not going to hurt the tenifer unless you get really extreme. If you don't like the new look you can have the barrel overcoating put back on.

It is true that if you manage to destroy the tenifer (pretty difficult to do) then it can not be recoated and you'll have to buy a new barrel from Glock. That would run you around $135 or so. Another option if you did manage to take off the tenifer would be to have it hard-chromed or NP-3 plated.

[Handy]

If you don't like the new look you can have the barrel overcoating put back on. Well, they'll put a phosphate coating on it, anyway. ;)



Yeah John, I know. But I still don't buy that Glock invented perfectly smooth, shiny phosphate. :)

[Made Man]

Thanks JohnKSa. I'll keep that in mind. I hear and seen a pic of a barrel, that they polish up real nicely, think i would have to go beneath the tenifer??

[JohnKSa]

The polished tenifer will be a dull gray color. If you polish all the way down to bare steel--you'll probably have to sandblast it to get the tenifer off and then polish it--then you may get a shinier color, but you will have lost all of your corrosion protection and also taken off the hardened, treated finish that protected the barrel from wear. It's your gun, but I recommend that you not try to remove the tenifer.

Handy,

I can only tell you what Glock says. The tech I talked to said that the barrels and the slides are overcoated using a variant of parkerizing--"sort of a super parkerizing" were his words. He also claims that the barrels and slides are overcoated using exactly the same technique. "They go in the same vat" were his words. He says that the difference in finish appearance after the overcoating was applied was due to the barrels being polished to a smoother finish before applying the "parkerizing." I've never heard of a person having their gun refinished complaining that the new finish was different from the original so whatever they're doing, it seems to replicate the original overcoating virtually identically. Clearly it's not a re-tenifer since it's common knowledge that tenifer can't be done in the U.S. and besides Glock plainly states that it can not re-tenifer a gun.

[Made Man]

Well i did a lil bit of my barrel. I used a dremel witha buffing pad and a little buffing compound. I just lightly touched it to the barrel, just enough to get the "black" off of it then i stopped. I was thinkin about what u said about the tenifer and i surely don't want to remove it. I did bout 1" and a 1/2 back from the tip of the barrel then i did the sides where u can see when the gun is in battery. I think it looks pretty good but it is new to me. Like u said, if i want it black again i can send it back to Glock, but i like it this way.

[Handy]

I know, John. I called them, too.

I just think they don't know. Have you ever seen a refinished barrel?

[esldude]

Local gunsmith ported a Glock 20 a coworker had. The guy then wanted the barrel shiny to show through the ports. He used one of the large polishing wheels. And just carefully polished it till it shined. I later purchased that pistol. Looked kinda neat in a flashy sort of way. Pistol functioned fine, didn't change any of the characteristics of it. Using the polishing wheel it ended up so shiny it looked nearly chromed. Figured without a coating it would rust easily. I live in the southeast where summers are very humid. But the barrel never looked dull or got any corrosion on it the 5 years I owned it.

[Made Man]

Originaly posted by esldude

Figured without a coating it would rust easily. I live in the southeast where summers are very humid. But the barrel never looked dull or got any corrosion on it the 5 years I owned it.

I figured THATS the tenifer showin what it can do w/o the black oxide on it.

[JohnKSa]

I just think they don't know. Have you ever seen a refinished barrel?Nope. I'm an engineer. Knowing the qualities of the tenifer I wouldn't pay to have a cosmetic finish reapplied when there's already an excellent finish in place. ;)

I remember some posters on GT saying that they had theirs redone and said it looked just like new.

[Dpswan]

There are some companies and businesses you can send your barrell in to and they will remove the black, and make the barrell nice and shiney. It's called jeweling. It usually only costs about $30-$50.00.

[wheel]

The polished tenifer will be a dull gray color. I

Not true. Polishing off the black oxide with a simple dremel tool or by hand will produce a mirror or satin finish, depending on what you want and how you do it. There is nothing gray about it.

[JohnKSa]

The properties of tenifer (including the color) are available online. It would be wise to do some research before posting authoritatively.

It's true that tenifer can be polished to a brighter finish, but it only extends one to two thousandths of an inch into the surface and can be removed by abrasive polishing. If you polish through the finish the corrosion resistance of the material will be destroyed.

Polishing by hand with something like a scotch bright pad or perhaps steel wool is not likely to damage the tenifer. Using a dremel and an abrasive polish is another story.

[Ausserordeutlich]

John, I'd bet that you'd have to do some really serious polishing to "remove" the tenifer from a Glock's barrel. By "removing", you're actually saying that you'd have to remove several microns of the barrel's steel. I doubt that there's much danger in using a Dremel with a very fine abrasive like Simichrome to polish the de-phosphated barrel. I've polished the feed ramps of every Glock barrel I own, to a mirror-like shine. That's the tenifered steel shining, folks. I can guarantee you the miniscule amount of polishing my Simichrome and I did didn't penetrate the steel surface of the feed ramps such that the tenifer was compromised.

Similarly, you'd have to do some SERIOUS polishing (let's call it "grinding"), in order to change the "critical dimensions" of the barrel sufficiently to affect accuracy. As a matter of fact, I find that concept just plain silly.

[wheel]

Polishing by hand with something like a scotch bright pad or perhaps steel wool is not likely to damage the tenifer. Using a dremel and an abrasive polish is another story.

NEVER USE STEEL WOOL !!

As most people are aware, treated steel like Glock's "Tennifer" (or even stainless steel) is not completely immune to rusting. It just takes more abuse for rusting to occur with it.

On such surfaces, use of steel wool can result in tiny embedded pieces of the steel wool in the part, which will obviously rust very quickly and possibly accelerate rusting of the treated metal itself.

So never use steel wool on treated metal surfaces like Glock's "Tennifer" or XD's or S&W's equivalent (forgot what they call it), or stainless parts.

[Bill DeShivs]

Wheel
That's another Internet myth! I have never seen this happen. Steel wool is much softer than gun steel, it won't "imbed" in it. I have even polished aluminum knife handles (much softer than steel) and have never seen them rust, either.
Bill