Traditional Blue, Phosphate or Chemically Blackened surface treatments
which have been used for years in the Firearms Industry are easily worn
off and are not all that resistant to corrosion, this will leave metal
surfaces, bare and unprotected from the elements.
At Roedale Precision we use one of a variety of Modern Coating Methods to ensure
our Custom Rifles are protected against harsh environments and hard wear.
Cerakote (Micro
Dyne – NIC Industries)
Cerakote is a Ceramic based 2 part bake-on coating. With a unique backbone,
Cerakote Fireamrs Coating improves performance and reliablity over conventional
finishes. This state of the art coating technology out performs any competetive
coating in both laboratory and real world applications.
Water Transfer or Immersion Coating ( Colour Vision)
In the immersion coating process, the rifle part (substrate) is dipped into a
bath of the coating, which is usually of a low viscosity to enable the coating
to run back into the bath as the substrate emerges. This process is frequently
used on porous substrates, hence wooden stocks can be coated. Application of
decorative patterns such as realtree cammo, carbon fibre, wood grain and
marble, as well as many other decorative or graphic patterns to numerous objects
are possible.
At Roedale we have use all of the available coating types over the past
years and have come to the conclusion that Cerakote is the best of the available
bake on finishes for metal parts, and the air cure type cerakote is also
great for stocks. Previously we personaly coated all our Rifles and Stocks
except for subcontracting the Water Transfer finishing work. Due to the
increased volume of rifles in the custom series production we have decided to
subcontract all our coating work. Waffenbeschichtung Nord http://www.waffenbeschichtung.de who
are a professional firearms coating company, now take care of all
our have all our rifle and stock coating.
PVD (physical vapour deposition)
A modification of the ARC-Technology is used in the coating of our weapons systems.
The modification optimizes the application of thin hard coatings.The PVD Technique
is advantageous because the temperature of the coating process lies between 200°C
and 500°C therefore below the tempering temperature of steels used in the
manufacture of Firearms. Hence there is no loss of temper or deformation of the
steel nor is the microstructure of the steel affected negatively, this means
there is no loss of accuracy. Situated in significant positions inside the high
vacuum PVD chamber are electric arc vaporizers. An electric arc vaporizes the
coating material (e.g. titanium) into highly ionized metallic vapour. This metallic
vapour is accelerated with electrical energy onto the surface of the rifle part
(substrate) that is to be coated. Adding reactant gas (i.e. nitrogen) applies
a very hard and thin coating on the firearm surface.
PVD is used in the manufacture of items including coated cutting tools for metalworking,
fabrication and special smaller tools mainly for scientific purposes. We also use
this process in the manufacture of our Custom Precision Rifles and parts.