Today, rifles are offered in a myriad of weather and rust resistant finishes and metals. However, there are a lot of guns out there which use a traditional blue finish that seem to start rusting as soon as you take them into the field. This is especially true if you hunt in climates where rain is common during hunting season. There are also a lot of companies out there offering different aftermarket finishes to include hard chrome and it's variants, and various baked-on paint finishes. We explored the different options to see what we could do at home. There are many do-it-yourself finishes available to the consumer. For the purpose of this experiment, we chose Brownell's Teflon-Moly oven-cure finish.

(When using cleaners and spray paints, be sure to do so in a well ventilated area open to the outdoor, fresh air. A spray painting mask is highly recommended when applying the paint to the gun.)

We chose a CZ-550 rifle in standard blue finish as our test candidate. The original finish on this gun was in good condition with no rust which made our work easier. The thing that makes this finish a bit tricky is having to bake it at 300-350 degrees for 30 minutes. When these paints are baked, they tend to out gas some rather nasty chemicals and have a terrible smell. Even if you could fit the rifle in your kitchen oven, it is probably a really bad idea to try and bake your gun inside your home.

Since we are gearing this to the home user who may only do this once or twice, we needed to find an oven solution that was cheap and easy to implement. We came up with an idea of using an enclosed metal housing in which the rifle is suspended. Heat is applied from the outside with a propane burner. A thermometer is installed inside the oven unit and the temperature is controlled by the user who is watching the thermometer. We obtained some metal ducting and end caps at the local hardware store. We will detail this setup in a moment.

Prepping the rifle for the paint job is very important. The more time you spend properly doing this preparation, the better the quality of the final finish. It is very important that all oils and grease be removed from the gun. This includes even the oils from your hand touching the bare metal. The key to getting all the oil and grease off your gun is to use an industrial strength degreaser. The gun supply houses sell TCE (trichloroethylene) for doing this. However, we felt that there must be a more affordable option than $15-20 a can, plus shipping. So we looked around for an alternative. What we found was brake cleaner that you can buy from your local auto parts store. Just look on the can and make sure that it contains TCE and indicates that it removes soil and grease. At $3.00 a can, it's a much better deal. For a rifle, you're going to need 4 or 5 cans to do the job right.

 Before degreasing your rifle, give it a good, standard cleaning to remove any powder and carbon from the surfaces. If dirt has accumulated on the surface, wash it off and give it a good scrubbing. If your rifle has rust on it, you must remove the rust before finishing the gun. By now you should have removed the bolt, magazine hardware and stock and  be working only with the barreled action. We did not refinish the bolt on our gun but did finish the magazine hardware separately.

Once you have the gun clean, it's time to de-grease. You'll want to hang the rifle muzzle up to do this. We found the easiest way was by passing some steel wire down the barrel (cover the end with a piece of tape to prevent scratching the bore) and then through an empty and unprimed ammo casing. Pass the wire through the primer hole and bunch up the wire so that it will not pull out of the hole (picture #1). Glide the casing into the chamber and hang the other end of the wire from a suitable place that places the action high enough off the ground to work with. Place cardboard or other material below to catch the overflow of the degreaser (picture #2). You will be surprised how much dirt and grease will come off of your seemingly "clean" gun. Start from the top and spray every surface of the gun. Then do it again. Be sure to wear powder free gloves to prevent your fingers from depositing oils on the clean surfaces. Take a clean, oil-free towel and soak it in cleaner and rub down the external surfaces to be sure everything gets degreased (picture #3). Apply extra cleaner to the action parts and on the rails where oil can hide and leak to, prior to painting, thereby ruining your finish. Use a clean toothbrush soaked in cleaner to get to edges and hard-to-reach areas. If there is grime in areas where metal parts are joined, use a sharp pick/razor blade to get in there and remove everything that doesn't belong (picture #4). You can't use too much degreaser but you can easily use not enough.  Once you have cleaned everything, start once again from the top and give the action another full run of the degreaser. Let it dry and look carefully for any indication of residual oil. If you find any -- spray it some more.

Once all of this has dried, you are ready to paint. But first you need to tape up any areas where you don't want paint to fall. For example, the trigger mechanism and the barrel chamber. Make sure these are carefully taped off so no paint can seep into these areas. Get a high quality painting tape (as it will come off without leaving a gummy residue on the parts). This tape is left on for painting but removed for the baking of the paint.

Before painting, be sure to set up some sort of cardboard or plastic backdrop and floor drop to catch the overspray. Make sure you shake the spray cans well. We shook them each for 15 minutes before using them to ensure a good paint mix. When spray painting, you always want to start spraying at some point before the object and end at some point past it. While you may feel that this wastes paint, it provides a smooth, wrinkle-free finish. Use a hair dryer or heat gun to warm up the surface of the metal. You don't want it hot -- just warm. When spraying, go for several light coats instead of one or two heavy coats. Don't be concerned if you don't get full coverage on the first couple of passes. The name of the game is a smooth, light application repeated several times until full coverage is achieved.

Begin painting from the muzzle working back and forth in a sweeping motion, going well past the rifle before changing direction. Keep the flow constant and work your way down the gun. Wait a couple of minutes and then do it again, being sure to go around the gun and spraying all of the sides evenly. Resist the urge to just put a little extra paint on to get it done. Take your time and work slowly and carefully. It will take 2-3 cans of paint to finish the entire rifle. After you are done painting, let it dry for several hours before trying to move the gun. The paint, before baking, is quite soft and will scratch easily.

(A note here: It is recommended that bare metal be bead-blasted to make it rough for the paint to have extra surface area to cling to. Our research indicated that a brushed, blue finish has sufficient microscopic nooks and crannies to hold the paint without bead blasting. However, raw metal surfaces must be treated prior to application of the paint. One option besides bead blasting which is even more durable and rust-resistant is to apply a parkerized finish to the gun prior to painting. We had done this on our 1911 project with great success. Parkerizing at home is very easy to do with the Brownell's kit. The end result is a rust-resistant, parkerized finish covered by a rust-resistant, epoxy-moly finish that is almost bullet proof.)

Now it's time to get your baking oven set up. We will outline our approach below. However, there are countless ways that this can be accomplished. As indicated earlier, we decided to use common, hardware store, metal ducting. We carefully took down the gun, pushed out the case and cut the wire to release the case. Using the same wire, we then hung the rifle in the center of the metal duct tubing as shown (picture #5).  A thermometer was poked through in order to read the internal temperature of the oven (picture #6). The tubing itself was hung about 18 inches off the ground and the end caps were put on. Using a propane, portable camp stove as a heat source, we began to heat the tubing from end to end, making sure to always keep the fire in motion to ensure an even distribution of the heat.

We monitored the internal temperature and, within a few moments, the temperature had reached 300 degrees. Then it was just a matter of applying heat as needed to keep the temperature above 300 degrees and below 350 degrees (picture #7). We cannot stress enough the importance of doing this in a place with outdoor ventilation such as a garage with its doors wide open. Aside form the fumes of the paint, the galvanized tubing will start to discolor and perhaps produce it's own toxic fumes. We performed this step with a full respirator mask attached for safety, and cross-flow ventilation in the garage from 3 open doors. If in doubt, do this outside.

After 30 minutes, we turned off the heat and let everything cool down for an hour before touching anything. Although the oven cooled down quickly, the steel of the barrel kept the heat for quite some time and was still warm after an hour. After we removed the rifle, we were greeted by a beautiful, semi-gloss finish that was even and well applied. We then proceeded to installing the barrel band as described in the barrel band article.

It's been over a year since we applied this finish and have used the rifle a good deal. Weather as a camp gun when in brown bear country, at the range or for hunting, it has seen the elements and had it's share of hard knocks. The finish has remained durable and trouble free. We expect it to remain so for quite some time to come. The importance of proper preparation cannot be overstressed. Skimp on the preparation and you will end up with a finish that peel and flakes off over time. Do it right the first time and you will have a finish that will last for years.