As you may recall, I bought an M1 Garand through the Civilian Marksmanship Program. I received it in mid-November, and wrote a post about it over at Say Uncle’s Shooter’s Carnival. I broke down and bought a new stock from Boyd’s when I concluded that nothing I could do was going to make the original look all that good, and I’d already planned to refinish the mostly bare metal surfaces with Norrell’s Moly Resin. I bought a quart from Norrell’s before I figured out how to build an oven to bake the barrelled receiver in. No way was that going to fit in the oven in my kitchen, and after smelling the resin, no way would I have tried anyway.
On a recent trip to the range, I found a business card for Mac’s Shootin’ Irons. All Mac does is refinishing, mostly using Gunkote. Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained, I dropped Mac a nice email asking if it would be possible to have him refinish my rifle using the Norrell’s I’d already bought. He actually looked up Norrell’s site, researched their moly resin, and emailed me back that he would be happy to do the job, but he wouldn’t be able to guarantee the durability of the finish – although he thought that Norrell’s was probably the same as Gunkote.
I made arrangements to drop of the Garand on the Saturday before Memorial Day, and I spent some time talking with Mac. His prices are higher than John Norrell Arms for refinishing, but Mac does the teardown and reassembly that Norrell’s doesn’t. If you have a pistol with sights that cannot be coated or cannot withstand the curing heat, he removes and reinstalls them, and Mac’s pricing includes return shipping. Since he lives in Tucson, I got a break on that, but Mac doesn’t have a storefront. Most of his business is done via mail-order. Further, Mac zinc-parkerizes the firearm as a FIRST step before applying the Gunkote, something that Norrell’s doesn’t do.
I picked the Garand up today. Yes, that was three weeks after dropping it off, but he was doing an experiment with a coating he’d not used before, and he was cutting me some slack on the pricing to boot.
All I have to say is: Just DAMN! That beat-up old 1943 vintage Springfield Armory M1 looks GREAT! It looks like it just rolled off the assembly line! Every metal part on the rifle has a smooth, gorgeous, uniform dark gray matte finish with a slight greenish tinge to it that beautifully compliments the walnut Boyd’s stock. I can’t wait to take it back to the range and try it out.
Thank you, Mac. And every time someone asks me about it, I’ll tell them who did it for me and how happy I am with it.