Parkerizing, pick one

Selecting Your Parkerizing Type: With or without free grain refiner.

For maximum strength and corrosion resistance, allow "With_free_grain_refiner", which is another improvement on its strength but not detracting from color.

Besides ours, do you make your own from the "free" formula? Or do you get another commercial kit?

Not unless you like risk, because they are inferior products by function. Our customers rave everywhere about our products. On the "free" formulae there is danger you can get an acid/water explosion, and other not-nice surprises. And they are not in chemical formula or performance what you can get with ours. This is also true of competitive formulas: Not as good, and/or not as "idiot proof." The chemistry charges we charge for the kits has never been a huge markup of what it costs us to create them. And as we make them better, we hold the reigns in on cost. This chemistry is way more complicated to manufacture, and more expensive than the "free" stuff. Our markeup is a fraction of what it is supposed to be in the Formualations business. We are concerned you get results. Chemicals come in second place.

If you have any question as to which version to get,, do not hesitate to call or email. The reason Zinc is no longer available at the moment is because it is not corrosion resistant.

For best color and most idiot proof, as well as lowest cost for the best quality kit and parkerizing anywhere, then pick some up. Satisfied customers include people at gun forums that do DIY make-your-own functional gun kits like the FAL files, professional Gunsmiths, Professional Motorcycle restorers, and especially all the first timers who want black of a finish of their choosing. In defense of this kit, it is much more corrossion resistant and easier to do than hot-bluing. It is a step in the right direction.

For best durability of all, maintaining the "idiot proofness" of the above, for minimal extra cost for the results, consider choosing the recommended super heavy duty Manganese, the highest price, but the best.

Manganese is a super metal, and Zinc is not. It is raw power.

So there you have a quick summary of them: all extremely good and extremely inexpensive for the quality. Kits have great bang for the buck, and will lead you on to other finishes we have, including MolyFusion.

Our Kits contain alot of high quality chemistry, and you can mix 'n match the two heavy duty kits together, and you can add Guardian for less. No other kits compare with our engineering. Remember we are High-Technology. We combine the best of the ancient with Modern Chemistry to give you the best.

We also have MolyFusion, better than any comparable product or service of its type in the World.

To assist you with which brand, here is a section from one of our customers, talking about experience: "gsmart... I don't believe that you are doing anything wrong, just that you have a kit that may not be a true "Manganese Phosphating" kit. My first attempt at home parkerizing was with a kit from Adventec that a friend was having very little luck with. I tried and got the same results as he did, and you seem to get .... the finish seemed "gummy" in appearance and would wash/rub off when it first came out of the solution. In fact, the instructions stated that the finish would be soft and needed to "harden" before rubbing! What I have learned since makes me believe that it was not a true phosphating process, since the true process of phosphating is a conversion-coating process wherein the acid actually dissolves some of the metal from the surface and re-deposits it in the form of an insoluble metal salt onto the surface. This "salt" is a combination of iron and phosphate (in the case of iron phosphating), iron, zinc, and phosphate (in the case of zinc phosphating), or iron, manganese, and phosphate (in the case of manganese phosphating). If you leave out the manganese, what you get is iron phosphating, which has the same color as the base metal. Since the "black" does not stick, I suspect that it is not truly manganese in solution. Maybe some sort of "dye" that just acts to color the iron phosphate coating. The fact that the solution is "black" to begin with may also be a clue. The typical solution should be almost clear, with maybe a slight blue/green tinge. As I said, that was my first atttempt and it almost put me off until I did some research and decided to try another type. The kit offered by Shooter's Solution is a true manganese phosphate kit and works very well. " (8-28-01)

Back to Parkerizing Kits Page. << Parkerizing Home Page