Etching or over etching?
There has been one "professional barrel re-finisher" who over etched, buffed out markings, returned guns with bores coated in rust etc. He no longer posts here.
I think his first name is Ken?
I cleaned the rust out of the bores on a set of barrels he did for a local guy, what a mess. That was hardly the only issue with the work he did on the set I worked on.
Ken61 isn't here to defend himself, but I believe he was experiencing some health issues that may have impacted the quality of his rust bluing work.. As a Viet Nam combat veteran, he was no spring chicken either.
He certainly was capable of nice work, and he posted a lot of photos. That apparently prompted a number of guys here to contact and hire him to blue their barrels. He was doing a lot, with no complaints, and possibly took on more jobs than he could handle with reasonable turnaround times. And there were also many who were quite happy with his work, and said so here. Ken would also know, on his worst day, that there is no black and white Damascus bluing process that does not involve etching to remove the black oxide from the steel, while leaving the more tightly bound oxide on the iron dark. Without the etching steps, there is no contrast, and it can be very hard to tell Damascus from fliud
steel.
But it doesn't take a lot of guts to kick a man when he is down. At least he had some integrity, because he wasn't advertising his business in his tag-line with every post he made, and then not paying Dave for jobs that resulted from that continual free advertising.
And this also illustrates why Dave would be nuts to implement photo hosting here. Those who aren't capable of doing it themselves would be very quick to bash him publicly if things ever malfunctioned.
