Well, after an afternoon of trying to clean up the frame and slide with 0, 00 and 0000 steel wool, the results are terrible,. The pistol actually looks worse now than it did when I started, which was my fear going into this project...
There's an "X" mark on the trigger guard, maybe that mean "experimental alloy"!
To say that I'm very disappointed would be an understatement. I followed all of the instructions, prepped the gun very carefully and to see it turn out like this is disheartening. Now I'm back to where I was several months ago, trying to find a professional who can re-Parkerize this gun and get it looking decent, because it's obviously beyond my abilities. If I re-Parkerize it, it may turn out even worse since I don't know what caused these poor results. At 1st, I thought the teflon interior of the electric roaster interfered with the manganese phosphate, but the interior of the slide, which didn't come into contact with the teflon lined container is also screwed up. If I keep at it with the steel wool, I'll really mess it up even more than it is now.
I talked to David (Targa911s) today and he recommended that I hit the gun with steel wool to get the discoloration off and some came off the frame but the slide is hopeless. The entire frame and slide do not look at all like I wanted them to. No gray color, it looks more like bare metal to me.... I really don't know what happened but maybe I found out why the previous owner blued the gun at some point.
I'm done for today, I need to regroup and figure out what I can do to pull this project out of the steep dive it's in now....