refinishing mags with rustoleum

[LorDiego01]

The thread of the title just about sums it up.

I was at the zombie shoot in Langhorne last weekend blasting away in the rain all day.

Two of my FAL mags, which are unfinished, cheap and crappy, turned all kinds of orange from surface rust.

I haven't cleaned them yet, but I'm thinking of using a soft metal brush on them with some oil, then applying some Rustoleum for a faux-ghetto finish.

This is my nice FAL, and I'd hate for the rustoleum to cause any sort of trouble with my rifle, its beautiful finish, or anything like that.

What do you guys say? Yay or Nay?

[LorDiego01]

I'm adding this picture so that my question is not the most ghetto thing on this thread.

[NightRocker]

The thread of the title just about sums it up.

I was at the zombie shoot in Langhorne last weekend blasting away in the rain all day.

Two of my FAL mags, which are unfinished, cheap and crappy, turned all kinds of orange from surface rust.

I haven't cleaned them yet, but I'm thinking of using a soft metal brush on them with some oil, then applying some Rustoleum for a faux-ghetto finish.

This is my nice FAL, and I'd hate for the rustoleum to cause any sort of trouble with my rifle, its beautiful finish, or anything like that.

What do you guys say? Yay or Nay?

I think when it comes to depending on a mag feeding or not, or working properly, I'd (deep six) trash them and replace with new ones.

[Asmodeus6]

I think when it comes to depending on a mag feeding or not, or working properly, I'd (deep six) trash them and replace with new or Pmags.

It's a FAL not an AR. Reading the post before responding is mutually beneficial for everyone.





As for the slightly rusty mags. Are they worth refinishing? FAL mags are usually pretty cheap. But if you want a set of even more beater mags. Go for it. You could always skip the oil and rustoleum, and use cold blue on them instead. You'll probably have to brush them pretty hard to get most of the existing finish off. And they might turn out spotty or swirly. But it will probably be better than paint.

[incynr8]

you can paint them, but duracoat or durabake (spray can), then sentenced to an oven is a potentially thinner and more durable finish.

I wouldn't use oil. I would clean them and consider hitting them with a metal prep zincphosphating metal stabilizer, then cleaning then with a tack cloth and spraying.

this is similar to how many of the tacti-cool ar-15 mags get painted.

a one step process would probably be eastwood rust encapsulator, or a quasi equivalanet product, rustoleum rust converter-primer. Both give a matte flat black primery surface and 'kill' the rust, while being a 'thin' finish.

lastly you could consider a cold blue method, or cold blue the lips and upper mag where it lives in the well and paint the lower.

I'd remove the innards for any process.

[LT Clay]

You would be better off if you sandblasted and parkerized them, then put a Duracoat finish or your choice of spray paint. The Parkerizing will keep them from rusting under the paint. If your going to be in the Wilkes Barre area give me a shout and we will sandblast and park them, I have all the stuff to do Parkerizing. Or if you want to send them I will do it for you, and I even have a metric mag here that you can have. My FAL is inch pattern.

LMK

LT Clay

[phillyd2]

I've done the very same with some old HK mags that for some strange reason were left outside all last winter. As a friend please don't ask.

HK mags can sometimes be had for about a buck a piece so I could have just as easily tossed them so I had nothing to lose. First I used a metal brush, then a healthy bath in navel jelly on one and rust neutralizer on another then some black matte rustoleum. Both worked surprising well. Sort of ghetto-lite

[mak47]

I don't have an FAL, and I'm not particularly familiar with the specs, but I do that with AK mags all the time.

It doesn't add a lot of thickness or anything, so I wouldn't see why it would cause problems. Just insert and remove them multiple times when you're done. That'll kind of rub off any paint that may interfere with the mag-catch mechanisms. Then look inside the rifle and make sure there isn't any paint rubbed off on the internals. If there is, clean it off, just to be sure it won't cause a problem later.

For prep, I usually just sand the rust off with some fine grain sandpaper then I spray the whole mag body down with Gunscrubber to degrease and clean off any dirt. You don't want to apply any oil before painting--it'll make it more difficult for the paint to adhere to the surface.

When I buy mags, I buy the cheapest milsurp mags I can find, they often have rust spots or beat to hell finishes, and the rustoleum method has worked just fine for me.

I know there will be plenty of people that say bead blast them and parkerize, but that isn't realistic for me at least. I don't have that kind of equipment and I'm not going to invest in it just to refinish a few cheap magazines.

As I said, I do this with AK mags. AK's have very loose tolerances all around, but I don't see any reason why it shouldn't work for your FAL mags.

[LorDiego01]

Thanks everybody for the tips and wisdom shared.

I will attempt this this weekend. I have a crapton of perfectly good FAL mags, so I guess it won't hurt to add a bit of rustoleoum to my junk mags.