Dr. Jules Von Frankenshtien

So a few weeks after the Glock, I talked a friend into letting me do some work for him. He had an old Mossberg 500 with a big old 32” barrel (if I remember right), and was not very tacticool. My friend called this particular shotgun Dr. Jules Von Frankenshtien for some reason, and he wanted it repurposed into a home defense weapon. I think the name is why I picked the color.

I purchased an 18” barrel, heatshield and shotshell carrier with integral top rail and went through the process. I had been using an old Harbor Freight blast cabinet to take off the finishing and etch the material to coated. At this point I was using standard 150 grit aluminum oxide because that’s what was in the machine when I inherited it. I have since switched to red garnet, on the advice of John from Branson Cerakote.

I had also bought an electric smoker from Lowes Hardware that turned out to be pretty descent for my needs as a beginner. I soaked the shotgun in simple green after disassembly for an hour, then heated up some vinegar in order strip off the old finish. By soaking the receiver with tubular magazine and barrel in vinegar, this allows the bluing to seep right off. I etched everything then gassed it out. After pulling it out of the oven, I noticed corrosion had formed on some of the parts. I’m sure there’s a chemical explanation for this, but I have no idea what it is. My solution is to now blast the parts as the last step. So my new process is soak/degrease, bake, then blast. I had to change my media in my blast cabinet to institute this, but that was no big deal.

After everything was prepped, sprayed my base coat which was Squatch Green. That’s the cool part/down fall of doing this for people, because when you ask them what they want the typical response is “I don’t know, something cool?”. So my answer was to get the base coat as close to Frankenstein skin as I could, so thats why the Squatch Green. I baked it out at 300’ for about 30 minutes before pulling it out. This temperature proved much to high as I should have only gone to 180’ for 8-12 minutes, but this didn’t prove to be a problem. However, baking the next coat of Graphite Black at 300’ for 5 minutes proved problematic.

Here is where I learned that to tac-out or flash cure a piece, you need to cure it at 180’, until the part is not tacky. To check and see, touch the part in an area where if it is still tacky, a finger print wont be noticeable. This is alot easier when you are going to battle wear the piece.

After taking a green scrub pad and acetone to all the parts, I engaged in battle-wearing everything. This was tough, but I was glad that I made the mistake in fully baking out the base coat, as there was no chance of me over wearing the graphite black and getting down to the bare metal. All in all, for my first battle-wearing project, it came out great. Adding in the drilling and tapping of the receiver for shot shell holder/top rail. this was a pretty fun project.