hello all. Here is part one on plating guns. In most cases guns will be blued or nickel originally. So the original finish has to come off first. Lesson learned-bead blasting or sand blasting create way more work. unless you want a matt finish,all it does is rough up the surface that now needs extra steps to smooth. Gun blue can be taken off with muriatic acid bath.Pic 1 shows the receiver after bluing is gone The smoother the finish,the more reflective the finish. I usually will matt finish the top of the firearm in the sight radius,but sometimes its nice to do 100 percent for the WOW factor. Once we have bare steel (aluminum will be later) some times I will buff it with black emory to see what Im dealing with, as it shows surface damage better. If there are no deep rust pits I start sanding with 400 wet,using sanding blocks on any flat surface. Pic 2 is my hi tech sanding block. Better known as a paint stick. On flat surfaces sand in one direction,say long way on this receiver to start out. then when you are happy with the way it looks,take the next grit in this case 600 and sand 90 degrees to the 400 as in pic 3.What this does is eliminate the previous  grits scratches. If you sand in one direction you will not remove all the scratches and the piece will never be like a mirror. Do the same on round areas too. This is as far as I have gone with this piece so far. I will be finishing it up on Sunday and will finish this post on Monday. Any questions on this,shoot me an email or comment below, Thank you. Out here till Monday.