A Tribute to Castor Troy

Your barrel needs a clean.. I can see fluff in it from here.

Arnie's extensive video/DVD collection comes to the rescue - Here's a few images I pulled from my VHS copy of Face-Off- Arnie

The finish seen in the photos above was accomplished by spraying a very good quality gold paint over the 'keyed' bare finish (silver) metal parts.

I did not attempt to spray the black plastic slide, as I felt that if wear occurred the finish would look terrible with black showing under the gold finish.

The theory being that if a gold plating of a real gun wears, silver would show through underneath too! Plus - silver is a lot more discreet that black if the finish was to wear.

The problem I have is that I cannot apply the gold finish to plastic parts, so I am left with the "Racy" two tone black and gold finish, which many of my shooting buddies say is going far enough.

But, what do they know... I have to go the 'Whole Hog', so I ordered myself a new silver metal slide, in fact, I ordered two! One slide was made by Sheriff in Japan, the other was by Perversity Guns Company in Hong Kong. My logic being that I wanted the best, so I would get both, then decide which one to keep.

The GPC/HK one arrived first, so that was fitted to the frame and then refinished. This was about 4 hours work, and it was left to bake in my patented low temperature oven (*read* airing cupboard), until the paint was totally dry and hard.

The Final Product: At last my dream is realised!

The photos you see to the right are of the finished gun, it took a lot of time and effort to complete the gun, and I would not do another. But wait! I have another slide on its way, and didn't Castor Troy have two gold .45's?

External Links:

WesternArms - the offical homepage of WesternArms

Strayer Voigt Inc. - the official homepage of SV

Springfield Armory - the offical hompage of SpringField Armoury

Sheriff - the homepage to Sheriff in Japan

Bell Charter Oak Holsters - If you are looking for a holster like the one in the image to the right then you can try the US company Bell Charter Oak Holsters. More specifically you can try this link here. (The link is here thanks to our US guru DumboRAT)

FAQ: (due to a sizable amount of emails concerning this project, Matt and myself decided to add this new section - Arnie)

Matt has broken this FAQ down into three sections, which you can find below:
Paint Job - how was it done ?
How is the paint job holding up?
Why not plate or Anodise?

Paint Job - how was it done ?
First of all totally strip the gun - and I mean totally!! Work out where the tight tolerances are, i.e. pin holes and make sure these are plugged, or at least make sure you only do one thin layer of paint around these areas.

Surface Preparation is the key (no pun intended) to a good paint job, the keying of the surface is best done with 400 grade wet and dry paper, please make sure all traces of the original black finish are removed and be careful not to round off any corners. The finish I have used is in fact an acrylic spray paint, I chose this type of paint after many phone calls to paint manufacturers and asking their technical departments which was the most durable paint they made, I was told that the modern acrylic was better than cellulose in that not only was it tougher, but it also in standing up to the elements including UV rays!!.

Spraying - 6 months in a paint shop taught me the rights and wrongs.Practice is essential. Nice even light coats, the final one should look like a thin film of gloss all over, then it will dry nice and evenly. Too little and you get a stippled finish, too much and you get runs, have a few trial runs on something else first until you get confident.

Suffice to say that the paint I used was meant for car wheels, and was designed to be very durable. Despite paint manufacturers claims I always do the "scratch test" on a pre-production sample. This is after the paint has been applied and left to cure in my patented oven *read airing cupboard*, I try and scratch the paint off with my nail. It has to pass this rudimentary test to go on my guns, so far my phone calls to the manufacturers have saved me from any failures.

The colour...well as I live in the UK and used a domestic brand, so I guess the best advice is to try your local stores, but do not choose any old Gold, look at several shades and please, please do a test on something other than an Infinity first, say an old springer - then see how it looks and holds up.

Good Luck and remember that doing the wrong thing can ruin your gun, so please be careful. TOP

How is the paint job holding up?
I am very pleased to say - that the finish is holding up really well. there is a very small amount of wear the front edges of the frame due to holster wear, but so minor as to not show up on a photo...but I know they're there!! TOP

Why not plate or Anodise?
I did look into anodising/plating, but was advised that anodising aluminium is quite difficult and can show up badly as two different grades of aluminium are used (Sheriff or PGC slide/ WA frame), plus I would not be able to anodise the smaller screws and pins which are not aluminium. A flash copper plating prior to chrome plate (as used by WA themselves) on the Infinity Silver series frames decreases tolerances too much for my liking. TOP

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