Thread: DIY parkerizing

Hi all

Thought I would share my journey to do some home parkerizing on a couple of rifles that I have.

It all started when I brought a mid 60's Parker & Hale in 22-250. It had a nice wooden stock that had seen better days, so that was the first task. Stripped all the nasty varnish off and then sand through the grits up to 1000 and then boiled linseed oil for a classic finish.

The barrel (full varmint profile) had some quite nasty pits on the outside and the blueing was in a sad state. So I started looking at options to refinish it.
I had tried cold blue on a shotgun barrel once and wasn't very happy with that. Then I read about parkerizing. It seemed like a good wear resistant finish, mainly used on WW2 era firearms. It could also be done at home with a bit of planning and assembling some items.

The project has been slowly moving over the last 12 months. I have been buying materials as the budget allows and accumulating the neccessary gear.
As I go along and learn more about it the gear has been changing and hopefully improving.

The parkerizing process involves submerging a ferrous metal part into a tank of phosphoric acid, manganese dioxide and pure water. Which is sitting at a temperature of 94 degrees Celsius.

Before the part are immersed they must be totally free of oil, dirt and old finishes.
To help with this I built my own sand blasting cabinet.

The tank to submerge the part in needs to be non-ferrous and able to withstand a moderate heat.
The first tank I made was stainless steel chimney flu split along one side and some ends welded in to make a tank. Sitting in a MDF frame.
I originally was going to heat this with a dryer element suspended below the tank providing radiant heat. Mainly because I had a dryer element.
Then I came across a hotwater cylinder element left behind by the previous owners of the house, much better idea it could heat the water directly.
Bit of a flaw with the stainless tank was that although I had access to a tig welder and some knowledge of how to use it, the stainless was of a very thin gauge and ended up stuck together but holey, falling back on my builder roots I siliconed the joint and was going to hope for the best once it was full of hot acidic fluid!
So the mind turned to alternative tank materials, that would be cheap.
I looked at aluminum, but didnt want to end up with the same problem as stainless.
Next thought was PVC box section and glue some ends on it, wouldnt withstand the temperature.
Then I thought of plexiglass or acrylic sheet. After some research it turns out it can withstand up to 160°c which is more than enough. Even better I had plenty of it laying around at work so it was free and it can be worked with woodworking tools.

So I have just finished the tank, glue is drying. The heater element fits nicely in a hole in one end of the tank.
To control the heat of the solution I brought a PID controller which includes a thermocouple to measure the heat of the solution and then controls a relay to turn the element on and off.

So just a few more steps and i should be ready to get the process under way. Hope that's not too long a description!! More pics to come.

Cheers
Dan

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