STRIPPING POLYCOAT & GUN BUILD

[SPO1SHADOW]

I do at least one of these a month if I get the time. My Son who works at Cherry Point was a 1911 addict until he got to shoot some of my CZ's during the past Holiday. He lives over 6 hours away and is deployed quite a bit so we don't get to see each other for years at a time. To make a long story short he put in his order for a tu-tone CZ 75 and I was more than happy to do it for him. I went to Gunbroker and tried to find an unmolested surplus gun since most of it will be tossed in the green box anyway. I found a very good, unmolested and for all practical purposes one that looks to be unfired. It has a lot of handling chips and marks in the finish so it is a perfect candidate for a gun build. This was a spare surplus CZ 75B from Israel so the price was well under $400.00 with shipping included. The first thing I did was to completely strip all of the components out of the frame and slide. CZ Custom's bench block really comes in handy for this and made life much easier for driving out and retaining the various pins and springs.


Once you get everything disassembled you will need a large plastic bowl that can accept the slide and frame with some room for the stripper to flow around the parts. Here everything is gone and ready to go into the bowl.


Place your slide and frame into the bowl.


Then very carefully fill the bowl with the stripper until it covers all parts. You will want to wear rubber gloves and eye protection when you do this. You DO NOT want to splash this stuff on skin or any painted surface. It will immediately blister your skin or blind you. After filling the bowl put the top on it and put it somewhere safe so if the bowl were to leak it doesn't leak out on anything important. I put it outside on an old shooting table. I do not want this stuff sitting in my house period. Now that the slide and frame are covered we wait. In about 3 days all of the Polycoat will be totally gone and all that is left is clean metal. And by-the-way, the stripper in the bowl is good for about 4 guns so this is a pretty efficient way to strip off the Polycoat for very little money.



 

[ThompsonCustom]

Looking forward to your build.

[Stuart]

This looks like it will be fun.
looking forward to seeing your progress.

[Rhino]

I was at Camp Lejeune for several years, flew out of Cherry Point several times and retired in 2010. Tell your son I Thank him for his service. I will watch the build to see how it turns out. The slow rust blue build you did was awesome. Are you adding the FLGR to this one?

[SPO1SHADOW]

Yeah, doing it all. FLGR, modified beaver tail, action, sights, trigger, safeties, slide stop, grips, springs, wide sear, narrowed Shadow hammer, 10x bushing and he wants the high luster Colt blue slide against the Browned frame. This will take a while but I will enjoy every minute.

[Rhino]

Awesome, make sure it has a cup holder for your son's lifer juice. 😄

[SPO1SHADOW]

So this gun went in the stripper yesterday at 2PM. I just went outside and checked on it and all of the outside Polycoat is gone but the toughest part of the strip is still working, the inside. I don't know why the Polycoat is so much tougher to remove on the inside of the frame but it takes several days to get it to come loose as you can see inside the magazine well, it is gelling but has not came off yet. Back in the bowl she goes to spend another day cooking.




This used to be the Polycoat on the outside, by the time I am through it will be dissolved also.

[Rhino]

Frame is cast I think, not as well polished inside as it is outside is I'd guess. Show us how you do the trigger guard under cut and reshaping the beavertail on this one.

[nicky]

The inside of the frame is rougher & the plycoat has more to bit into there than on the outside of the frame. You may have to get in there with a brass brush & stripper to get it all off.

[Tok36]

Interesting stuff. Gooey pics too!

[jameslovesjammie]

This is good stuff!!!

Watching patiently...this may come in handy later.   

[Rhino]

SPO1SHADOW does some really awesome work, all I can say is he has attention to detail.

[Kenneth]

Following for updates.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[copemech]

Don't get none on ya!

[SPO1SHADOW]

Got up at 5 this morning and went out to check on the stripping. When you notice a lot of bubbles coming up the Polycoat is gone and the stripper is then working/reacting on the phosphate coating under it. Had plenty of bubbles coming up and all of the Polycoat was gone.



Now that the gun is stripped the first thing I want to complete is all the metal work. First on the list is getting rid of the irritating sharp edge on the bottom of the beaver tail. I use a round bottom file, sand paper on 3" wide rolls and a Dremel with a sanding drum attachment. The Dremel is first up taking off the sharp edge off the bottom of the beaver tail.




Once I get the edge knocked off I use the Dremel to start shaping the angles. Once complete the sandpaper strips torn into 1.5" strips is used like shoe shining to blend everything even on both sides. I start with 220 grit and the final will be done with 400. Here the blending is started.