Could you have your barrel and receiver chromed?

[DalesCarpentry]

Can you have your barrel and receiver chromed? Have any of you ever heard of such a thing? If so where could you have it done and at what cost? Would it stay on. Thanks Dale

[quickdtoo]

Do you mean chromed?  Lots of barrels have chrome lined bores, and some parts are chromed.

Tim

[DalesCarpentry]

Yes chromed. Dale

[Graybeard]

GBO Sponsor SSK Industries does that with a chrome finish they call SSK Khrome.

[DalesCarpentry]

Thank you GB. I think it is a kind of neat idea. Dale

[Jim See]

My 75 year old neighbor had a rusty single shot shotgun. He cleaned and buffed it, reblued the barrel and had a fellow who worked in a plating shop drop the reciever in whatever they use to crome parts. That was about 10 years ago, it held up real well.  Last spring he even killed a turkey with that shinny sucker.

[DalesCarpentry]

 ;DThanks Dale

[Kurt L]

I would double check on HOW SAFE IS THIS.

I used to run chrome steel wheels on my trucks ,I had problems with the centers would crack
from lug hole to lug hole.
I stopped using them and also was told they was prone to this as the heat treat to chrome them.
also they must have been bad as you can't hardly get them anymore and if you do find them they
tell you up front now they are not warrantied from busting .
not sure how much heat to do the chrome and if it would hurt the gun.
Me now way,i am not taking the chance.
not when i can buy a stainless gun and run a polish wheel over it and get it to look like chrome.
I bought a stainless encore with plans on doing this (just have not did it yet)
I have done some ruger stainless black hawks and they look close to chrome.

also just to add a little more info aluminum wheels etc on the trucks can also be polished the same way
and also looks close to chrome.
Also steel if buffed and polished looks like chrome but it has to be oil coated or it will rust faster than you can say rust.
Kurt

[Graybeard]

Don't know much about the process SSK uses but they've been doing it to guns and barrels for at least 20 years and I have no doubt they know what they are doing. Now it might not be good to do as one said above and just drop the gun into a vat with parts being chromed commercially but what SSK is doing is a safe process.

[gwindrider1]

I know that some competition shooters have been having their pistol frames/slides black chromed for years to stop the wear factor, since some shoot 50-100,00 rnds. a year.  It's very hard stuff, but if not applied properly can flake with time.

[gunnut69]

Most of the white metal you see on pistols and such is nickle, not chrome. That's because of something called hydrogen embrittlement. Don't know how this happens but it occurs in an electroplating tank where chrome is deposited. Nickle can be electrolessly plated and so eliminated the problem. There are methods for applying chrome that don't use electricity and I would suspect that's what SSK uses. There may also be ways to electroplate with the aforementioned problems.. Also if I remember correctly chrome requires an under coat of copper to bond with steel. This adds to the dimensional problems that adding metal to a handgun can present.

[koginam]

I send these guys 20 to 30 guns a year to be hard chromed for customers,  gunnut69 is right they do apply a coating of cooper before the chrome.  None of the guns have had any problems in functioning because of the plating.
http://www.apwcogan.com/

[handirifle]

Any idea of what this would cost to do a levergun?  If one got a deal on a used one and had this done, or would it be better, money wise to just pay the extra $$$ for a stainless?