the only problem you may or may not have is increased odds of rust. maybe i missed it, but what handguard are you using? if it’s easy enough to take it off and put it back on, you could simply make sure it stays decently oiled over the ages. if it was me- i hate bare steel, so i’d definitely cold blue it. if you’ve never done it before, make sure you REALLY chemically strip the nut before you give it a go… i’ll wipe down the part with lacquer thinner, sometimes three or four times, to make sure all oil/grease is stripped, then really rub the blue into the spot. repeat as many time as necessary to get the spots good and dark, then just keep it oiled. it’ll be fine.
blue isn’t as good as park at holding oil, but i’ve hacked on/cut/modified enough steel parts over the years to assure you that it works a hell of a lot better than bare steel.
obviously its your gun and subject to your level of OCD (we all have our own level), but let me also just emphasize that if i was you, right now, with the weapon already permed, i would definitely use it as it is. it’s not a big enough concern to have it cost me any money or more time to fix.
just to throw this out here, i ordered a barrel nut from rainier arms and it looked new aka not like the one the OP has a picture of installed. mine was NOT installed by them, but after i installed my own, it still looked 10 times better than that. not sure how you make a barrel nut look like the one pictured.
A couple pix of a known 30+ year old barrel nut that’s been installed and removed using an armorers wrench at least 5~6x over the years and been on a couple combat tours besides.
Looking at the pix in the 1st post, I see several tool marks like what would be left behind by a big set of vice grips or a pipe wrench and where it appears a drift or very poorly fitting armorers wrench was used to try and align or snug things up. Not the kind of marks that would be produced by a binful of them knocking against each other.
I’m not saying this was or wasn’t induced by the OP, nor that it should have effected to coating like it did, just that obvious marks are there.
Apologies for the lack of complete clarity of the pix as I’m not supercameraguy.
I promise it looks far, far better than the ‘new’ one shown in the 1st post and still has pretty much all the coating in all the little scallops that a armorers wrench would engage still present. Wear on the points of the nut is a result of decades of handguards being installed and removed. Scuffage on the receiver side of the nut is from the weld spring on the delta nut being worked in conjunction with handguard intallation and removal.
Even with the bad pic, your 30 year old barrel nut looks better than mine.
I did scuff it alittle with the armorers wrench and stripped an ear off initially. Most of what you see however is the way it looked when I unpacked it.
Query:
Whatever coating that was still on it when you unpacked, did it easily scrape off when you tried working with it, or did it scale off in pieces that may have even held the shape of where they were initially applied?
If the former, poor quality coating density/hardness/curing type issue, if the latter, poor part cleaning pre~coating or over~accelerated curing process.
Not hard and fast rules mind you, but decent bet hedgers none the less.
That being said, I’m fairly certain the normal presevation treatment is a parkerization or bluing process, not a spray, dip or coating, so it shouldn’t have come off to begin with other than being scraped hard enough to get into the surface of the metal.
My guess would be that the part was not prepped correctly before it was finished, though I do not have much experience with phosphating (I’m assuming it’s phosphated).
It should have been rejected, along with any other parts in the batch with the same appearance, at some point along the way, either by the manufacturer or the company that received it.
While I do not put a huge emphasis on physical appearance alone, we do have finishes on firearm parts for a reason.
Some of you may have noticed that I deleted my email correspondence with Rainier from this thread.
After further consideration and other emails between myself and Rainier I do believe that this is just one of those mistakes that happen from time to time.
Paul seems like a nice guy. I’m sure he and I, if given the opportunity, would enjoy knocking a few back together.
It looks like they used"Anti-Seize" as evidenced by the silver swirls of past on the front of the receiver. Does it wipeoff on your finger? if so, I wouldn’t worry too much.
