A couple of years ago I refinished my AR with black DuraCoat however as time went on I got kinda tired of having an almost all black rifle. So I found a reason to order up some more DuraCoat in Ultra Flat Dark Earth and use up a few hours of time. I went back and forth trying to decide if I should disassemble the upper and lower or just keep it all together and just paint it. In the end I decided to do a full disassembly so that I could do a more thorough job and have a good end result.
There really wasn't anything special done for the prep work except to degrease all of the parts with non-chlorinated brake cleaner, give the existing DuraCoat a rub down with some 600 grit sand paper, and wash it back down with brake cleaner. The techniques and equipment that I used are pretty much exactly what is in my article DuraCoat Painting Made Easy so I won't rehash all of it here. Besides almost having a heart attack when I nearly dropped my LaRue rail after a fresh coat everything went great.
Before:
After:
I ended up not DuraCoating the barrel but instead just painted it with a can of Rustoleum, I think the color was cappachino or something. The color ended up being a little lighter than the FDE but not bad.
Something that I though was interesting though was that after diassembling the upper twice and reattaching the Nightforce I was only off .3 mils on the windage. The first four rounds of SW 77 gr RNG were about 1.2 mils high only because I had left my 300 yd zero on the scope. After I'd dialed down and sent the rest of the magazine downrange these were the results.
Save for those five shots around the outside, which I don't think I can blame on the gun or ammo, I had ten shots in about 3/4". Now I'm looking forward to getting out and stretching its legs a little again too see how the SW ammo does and I'm sure I won't be disappointed.
There really wasn't anything special done for the prep work except to degrease all of the parts with non-chlorinated brake cleaner, give the existing DuraCoat a rub down with some 600 grit sand paper, and wash it back down with brake cleaner. The techniques and equipment that I used are pretty much exactly what is in my article DuraCoat Painting Made Easy so I won't rehash all of it here. Besides almost having a heart attack when I nearly dropped my LaRue rail after a fresh coat everything went great.
Before:
After:
I ended up not DuraCoating the barrel but instead just painted it with a can of Rustoleum, I think the color was cappachino or something. The color ended up being a little lighter than the FDE but not bad.
Something that I though was interesting though was that after diassembling the upper twice and reattaching the Nightforce I was only off .3 mils on the windage. The first four rounds of SW 77 gr RNG were about 1.2 mils high only because I had left my 300 yd zero on the scope. After I'd dialed down and sent the rest of the magazine downrange these were the results.
Save for those five shots around the outside, which I don't think I can blame on the gun or ammo, I had ten shots in about 3/4". Now I'm looking forward to getting out and stretching its legs a little again too see how the SW ammo does and I'm sure I won't be disappointed.
