I polished my S&W model 65, S&W model 629 and my Ruger Security Six.
After buying my Ruger SR1911, my first thought was polishing the flat sides, leaving the front and back with the sand blasted finish, but after polishing the slide I noticed that the engravings (these aren't roll marks) were very shallow and nearly disappeared.
First this is what an out of the box Ruger SR 1911 looks like
The finish is a matte, media blasted rough texture.
Here are some SR1911s that others have polished:
As you can see the engraving Ruger put on the slides is shallow (cut with a laser probably, instead of the old fashioned roll stamp). So when you polish the metal the engravings become less noticeable and almost disappear. Some people prefer the subdued look, but I wanted my gun to proudly wear the Ruger logo and the "made in USA" engraving.
I went and visited Trevor at Hyperion Precision. He took on the challenge without a second thought and within minutes had found the correct font (outline) and was manipulating it to fit the original engravings.
After making sure everything was lined up, he let the laser do it's job
Then he did the flip side, the Ruger Eagle and "hard R" logo
The finished product:
Now I needed to disassemble the gun and polish the flat sides.
I started with 320 grit using a piece of hardwood as a backer
I worked my way up to 2500 grit
On the right side is the model number and serial number, I taped them off until I got to the 1000 grit sand paper
I did not want to used the buffer around the roll marks or the holes, so I used some mother polish and the spent 2500 grit paper to put on a final shine
It looks pretty good and matches the slide, but I may go back and polish the entire gun
Some pictures in natural light, I am thinking about going back and polishing the whole gun (except for the top of the slide). If I do that I will update this post with pictures.
