Polishing my Ruger MKIII Before and After Photos

radioman

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Took me about two hours to do the job. I started with 150 grit to get the tooling marks out of the flutes. This was the worst part of the job. I could tell how sharp each milling tool was that cut each flute. Some were fairly smooth others were a mess. This part took at least half of the total job time. Also most of my finger skin. I finished the flutes off with 400 grit. The 400 grit went very smooth because after I ended with the 150 grit it was all worn out and did not leave many marks to sand out. After sanding all parts that needed it. (Tip-- the trigger guards on these pistols are left rough on the edges. So if you want a super good job don't forget to sand the edges of the trigger guard both with 150 then 400.) It was over to the bench mounted buffing wheel. I use white rouge as an abrasive. I find it to work well for most jobs. The photos are not to good as I can not figure out how to upload large photos to photobucket. Every time I upload the photos get re-sized to the size shown. If your interested in the job I can email you some larger photos.

BEFORE

DSC_2636.jpg


AFTER

DSC_2647.jpg


I lost the sun light on the after photo. It might come out a little better in direct sunlight as the before photo was taken?
 
Probably. It (and the deckboards) looks rather bluish in the after photo. Some sort of auto-white-correction going on that doesn't make it look like a true comparison.

I do have the white balance on (D300) I never thought of turning it off? I'll take another photo in tomorrows sun light. The difference is night and day.
 
The best way to show your photo is to take the raw image into MSPaint or something similar, resize the entire photo to 800x600, and save as JPEG. If you upload the huge 2-4MB image, Photobucket may resize automatically based on some template.

I opened the image with MSPaint and now I can't figure how to resize?
 
Look in the menu under "edit" or somewhere else (depends on your version on Windows/MSPaint) for the option to "resize". Choose the radio button that sets the units to pixels, and make sure the "maintain aspect ratio" box is checked.

Then simply click "Save as..." and choose the .jpg option. Highest quality is fine if it gives you that option, since the file won't be more than 100kB.
 
I do have the white balance on (D300) I never thought of turning it off? I'll take another photo in tomorrows sun light. The difference is night and day.

The camera can do white balance codes as a pre-set in JPEG mode. You can adjust white balance in any program if you shoot RAW. Your camera will have different white balance codes pre-set. They will show for different lighting situations. The processing on a computer program is better than your camera's processing, too.

You really should shoot RAW and manipulate on your computer for the best results.
 
I'm wondering if you're going to have any sight alignment problems from glare if shooting outdoors on a sunny day.
 
Nice job I have also done some polishing work on firearms as well as individual parts of firearms. It is amazing what you can do with a little time and ambition. In addition to the bench mounted wheel I use a dremel tool with flex-shaft. The many different buffing tips make it easy to get into tight areas and save a lot of finger pain and time.
 
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