I thought it was gun bluing, but it rubs off pretty easily. I cleaned mine with Dow Bathroom Cleaner (Scrubbing Bubbles) and some of the finish came off. I don't think that would happen with bluing. I am going to send mine off to one of the epoxy coat refinishers and get it back to black.
Yeah, it's not bluing or a parkerized finish, as on the weapons. Cerakote or Durocote would be nice and will last. Powder coat would be nice if you know someone that does it and add it to what ever job they have going. I've done some jobs on metal using an etching primer, two or three "dusting" coats, then a good epoxy paint and they've held up pretty good. Since I only have one cap that needs it, for now anyway, I might just do it that way and use it only for display in it's case. But I'm still curious to know what the original finish is.
You have a picture ?. I can't believe I just asked that ! I will be speaking to my plater in a few minutes. He would know
I'm thinking that it's just a non-reflective black paint. I've seen at least one auction for a Tech where the seller talked about how he used paint remover on the razor not knowing it was supposed to be black. I wonder if there was a fairly standard paint in use, at the time, for military applications.
Here is mine in its current state. I will probably send it off to Northshore or Delta Echo and let them do their thing, but I'm in no hurry right now.
Black paint, covered with lacquer. The coating degrades with time, probably due to some sort of chemical interaction between the base metal and paint. I've seen NOS military models, and they all look like that picture @Terry Williams posted. They might have looked like that originally, for all I know. Edit: At least two sealed NOS sets were opened in the last few years and they had the same greyish blotching/bleaching shown.
