airbrush for cerakote

any recomendations for a good air brush to apply cerakote?

sort of depends on how many you are going to do

for one or two the cheap Harbor Freight one (<$10) works just fine. the problem with it is the plastic internal parts that a good paint cleaner will destroy eventually

we moved to a small finish sprayer that works very well with no plastic parts.

what would you recomend to spray it with then. i have a couple of rifles that i am going to do and depending on how it turns out may do several in the future. i am working on a heat box now out of a 55gallon barrel so i can cure them in it. don't want something ill have to replace soon. i would rather invest a few more dollars and have something that will last.

this is what we use quite a bit.. it will hold enough to do several guns at once



http://www.harborfreight.com/air-tools/paint/adjustable-detail-spray-gun-92126.html

thanks, i will order one. any tips on applying cerakote?

do get a Good quality paint mask and wear it.. It goes on very thin compared to Durakote, so a little bit goes a long way. Practice a bit on smaller parts so you can get the feel for distance when spraying

prep is the big thing for any paint, so use the recommended 120 grit blasting media and keep it clean prior to application.. blow off any dust from the blasting. Acetone will help degrease it

we heat our parts a bit prior to aplication

after application we leave them hanging to dry for around 30 minutes before putting them in the heat box ..

When 1st applied the two part is very wet so we like to leave them hanging after spraying to let them dry a bit before handling them... keeps you from messing it up moving it over to the heat box( don't ask how I know...)


if you have an issue it comes off very easily while wet... after it dries and you cure it.. blasting is about the only way to get it off.

as you get some experience with it you can vary the amount of gloss in the finshed product by increasing the % of hardener a bit.
it will be pretty flat if you use the recommended ratio. as far as mixing the two parts we found syringes work well for getting the % correct.. you can get them in many sizes and they are cheap.

for the typical hunting rifle we use the Graphite black quite a bit

we plug both ends of any barrel prior to application.. Rubber plugs work well for the muzzle and fired case for the chamber end.

we have coated entire bolts with it but tend not to today.. Cerakote is a bit gritty so coating the entire bolt makes the action feel rough. we still coat the handles.

the one part air dry is also very tough and can be dried in your heat box as well. the black is very dull.

we get most of our black Cerakoat from Brownells or NIC directly for some of the odd colors not carried by most

be sure and clean your gun afterwards !!

let us know how it works for you

one last tip


store any remaing hardener in your refrig. This also works for Duracoat hardener.. It will last much longer this way

if you run out of hardener NIC is about the only place you can buy it