I made this for my wife. She wanted something 'girly' and I figured the CZ 82 was a good platform for me to attempt something like this. I started with a CZ 82 from AIM surplus. They hand selected one that appeared to have practically no wear. There were a couple nicks in the original finish, but other than that, it almost looked like it had never been shot. On test shooting, the gun was really good. The trigger had a lot of creep, but felt good otherwise. I completely disassembled the gun. Thanks go out to Sailorcurt. His instructions on the disassembly, modification, and reassembly were excellent. After disassembly, I just used paint stripper to remove the finish from the frame and slide. I used vinegar on the blued pieces to strip those. I did some stoning on the hammer/sear to get rid of the creep. I also worked on the slide release and mag release to get those nice and smooth. I used a Dremel to polish the trigger, hammer, etc. I then nickel plated those parts using a kit from Caswell plating. I also nickel plated all the internal components for corrosion resistance and to improve friction. I custom mixed Duracoat to get the light purple my wife wanted and sprayed it using a Paasche air brush with a #5 tip (in the image, the color looks a little grey, but it is actually more of a light purple). I used red sight paint for the dots on the rear sight and bar on the front sight. The grips I re-profiled by hand. I then sprayed them with white Duracoat and overlaid it with Duracoat purple pearl. I then sanded off part of the pearl, recoated the long edges with white, and overlaid it all with pearl again. I then finish sanded and polished them. They look way better in person than they do in the pictures. Also, I found some nice cufflinks that match my wife?s wedding ring and embedded them into the grips. They are only cubic zirconia, but they look really good.
