New style 10/22 stainless, can it be polished ?

[il Padrino]

I'm looking at a newer 10/22 with a 22" barell, in stainless, the barrel is the newer frost finish, I like the looks of the traditional shiny stainless, I was wondering if anyone has attempted to polish one up. I was thinking maybe with some fine emery cloth and metal polish I might be able to shine it up to look like the older style barrel.
Any thoughts/ideas if this would work?

 

[blume357]

You can polish the barrel but don't touch the receiver what ever you do.

I'd hold off for a while though.... you might find you like the target grey after a while.

 

[tmeeks]

why shouldnt he touch the receiver? Just wandering

 

[jadek44]

why shouldnt he touch the receiver? Just wandering

Because it is aluminum... I've seen them polished up nice tho..

 

[blume357]

I don't think the receiver is just aluminum but it has a painted coating on it too... So, to polish it you would have to take the coating off... just my opinion, I'd leave it alone... I've got a Adams and Barrett polished stainless steel barrel on one of my 10/22s and I'd like to figure out how to unpolish it and get it to the Ruger target grey.

 

[bada61265]

target gray barrel? dont think its a specific ruger color group. i think is just stainless matt finnish. bead blasted or something. i think the recievers are now just powder coated. and are still aluminum as always. they can be stripped and polished and i have seen some fine examples of this done recently. thinking about doing mine but am going to pillar and glass bed my stock first. if you like the polished look go for it. just start with some 220 or 400 wet or dry, if you can chuck it in a lathe it would be easier, sand it smooth and then if you want to go further you can use a cloth polishing wheel on a drill or bench grinder and some rouge and get it to a mirror shine. the same can be done to a stripped receiver and they will polish out, though should be clear coated as aluminum will oxidize if left bare.

 

[CraigC]

The new Ruger Stainless 10/22 barrels are not coated but bead blasted. This is NOT the "target grey" finish. There are still "fine grooves" from turning them down so there would be a hell of a lot of polishing to do. It would be best done on a lathe. I think I'd buy a take-off barrel with the brushed finish before I tackled that job.

The receivers are powder coated aluminum but they do not do as much finish work before the coating is applied as they used to. Most find the surface to be fairly rough after stripping the coating off. If you plan on polishing the receiver, plan on spending a lot of time sanding out imperfections. Use a sanding block.

The "target grey" finish is chemically applied to what is actually a fairly fine polish. So far no one has been able to duplicate it outside Ruger. To date, I know of no factory 10/22 to wear this proprietary finish.