It would be far cheapest to just buy a new receiver which is beveled well than paying someone to bevel one and then anodize it.
Lowers that I’ve recently seen that are beveled really well are Tactical Innovations billet lowers (I have one on my 3gun rifle), new S&W lowers, Daniel Defense lowers, SMOS billet lowers (they make the LaRue lowers).
I’ve seen some competitors use the Arrendondo magwells on normal forged lowers but they don’t really give you any competitive advantage unless you blend the lower into the contours of the Arrendondo magwell. The ones I’ve seen some left bare aluminum and some refinish in Norrells or GunKote.
BTW Failure2Stop I’ll be coaching/teaching on the 17th (of the this month) and shooting the match on the 20th at your old unit.
Quite interesting. I’m not going to condemn nor defend anyone in this debate. I will state that I spent the first 20+ yrs. of my adult life working in the refinishing industry & was a professional gunsmith. In the mid '70s & for quite awhile thereafter, we didn’t have the parts availability that you have today. We had to make it from scratch or modify existing parts. This included beveling mag wells on all manner of auto & semi-auto weapons, but most were 1911s, ARs & Brownings. Some of these 'smiths have faded from the industry, while some are still working hard at it. I’ve yet to see any negative issues arise with any of the weapons from that era that were properly and/or professionally altered. I not saying mine is the only answer, but I’m just saying this is 1st hand observation from a total now of well over 30 yrs. of weapons use in & around the industry. Other gunsmiths I’ve discussed this with agree, but I’ll admit my present circle of ‘friends’ is a very short list at this time. You’d likely recognize more than a few names on it. YMMV
Since this popped up and seeing that I was the OP I figured I would jump back in and update my perspective.
I have seen many M16s and M4s that have been rode hard and put up wet, so to speak. The bad ones have gone through enough use/abuse to remove the anodizing from the receiver and magwell. Of course this is not a good thing to have happen, which is what inspired this thread over a year ago. I figured that the dremeled M4 feed-ramps would take much more abuse than a magwell would and if they were holding up sufficiently, a lower-wear portion (such as the magwell) seemed to be at less risk of excessive wear. I had no intention of using an Arredondo since I wanted to use a BFG Redi-Mod.
Changes in the political and market climates caused me to decide against potentially ruining any of my lowers. Though some seem to be dwelling on minutia, there seems to be considerable evidence that machining and reanodizing runs significant risk of ruining a lower. I have no actual need for a beveled magwell, I just thought that it might be nice to have, as it was one of the features that made the MagPul lower so alluring.
At this point I am content to simply purchase a lower with the feature built in. Thanks to all that replied with useful information.
[QUOTE=scottryan;325266]Reanodizing the lower will open up all the pin holes about 0.003" to 0.005"
You will be able to tell your pins fit sloppy even though this doesn’t seem like much.
This goes against what I understand about anodizing…It was my belief that Anodizing penetrates the surface to X-depth and also builds up a surface layer of X-thousandths.
Does the acid bath erode the surface more so than it builds back?
Here is a one source for home anodizing kits and a little primer for anyone interested…
Quoted from the site above.
The following procedure is for anodizing aluminum parts. Anodizing will protect the aluminum parts by making the surface much harder than natural aluminum. Aluminum oxide is grown out of the surface during anodizing and then becomes aluminum hydrate that is extremely hard. The porous nature of the anodized layer allows the product to be dyed any color that is required. The method I describe is Type II anodizing (room temperature) and gives an anodized layer of .0002"to .001" (half of which is grown into the surface and half out of the surface). Parts anodized will become slightly larger by about .0005" Type III (hard coat) anodizing is done at much colder temperatures and at higher current densities and can reach thicknesses of .002". Type III anodized surfaces can typically only be dyed black or dark green due to the denser pore size. I do not cover the hard coat procedure because it is not in the “home brew” category due to the colder acid temperature and high current density that would be required to perform it. The anodizing guide will show you how to perform the more popular Type II anodizing (Room Temp) using the home brew hanging wire method with materials found at typical hardware and auto parts stores (bare bones method). Almost everything you need can be found locally except anodizing dyes and sealer which I sell small quantities of on this site.
I built my first engine (a '65 VW Beetle) when I was 13-14 years old… its not really hard at all, just pay attention to what you are doing and be smart enough to ask for help from people that know what they are doing. I know several people that have built up small engines from bare blocks of steel on milling machines in their home shop… Hell I know several guys that have made up single shot rifles from billets of steel and even a couple that have built ARs from blocks of aluminum… I’m sure that you think these guys are madmen.
I really have to laugh about the comments made in anodizing in this thread. Back in the mid 90’s, my little bro was an art student at one of the more prestigious art schools in the US. He studied metalworking and jewelry. Anyways, he worked as a lab tech in the schools jewelry / metal shop and since he had the keys to it, could come and go as he liked. We spent many a night hanging out in the shop making interesting bits and generally having fun.
I guess my point is that if 2 (not always completely sober) 20 year old college kids can handle anodizing, electroplating, forging, etc… I don’t think it is beyond the abilities of Rob or the OP.
Me and a friend are going into the billet lower business and are designing ours to have a wide mag bevel.
It seems a lot of people like that.
And you know what they say, give the people what they want.
I built my first engine (a '65 VW Beetle) when I was 13-14 years old… its not really hard at all, just pay attention to what you are doing and be smart enough to ask for help from people that know what they are doing. I know several people that have built up small engines from bare blocks of steel on milling machines in their home shop… Hell I know several guys that have made up single shot rifles from billets of steel and even a couple that have built ARs from blocks of aluminum… I’m sure that you think these guys are madmen.