Les Jones: S&W M&P Autos Developing Rust Problems?

June 28, 2007

Guns > S&W M&P Autos Developing Rust Problems?

A couple of people on The High Road are reporting rust on their M&P's slides.

While stainless steel can certainly rust, my gut feeling is that this indicates a problem somewhere in the production process, possibly even in the passivation of the stainless steel. The stainless slides are coated in Melonite, which should further inhibit rusting.

Posted by lesjones | TrackBack

Comments

It's funny. Years back, while I was in architecture school, a classmate got into a mild argument with me about this subject.

He claimed that stainless steel was "stainless" because a coating was applied to it and that the underlying metal was just one of various sorts of steel. He claimed, and correctly so, that if the "coating" was scratched, that stainless would rust just like any other steel.

I laughed at him and explained to him that he wasn't getting an accurate picture of what was going on at the molecular level with regards to the metallurgy. I explained what stainless steel was, what the general components were, and the pickling process that brings about the surface characteristics, hence the name, actually its misnomer, of stainless.

I then started in with the different kinds of stainless, and that there are sometimes different names that get attached to the same steels and then proceeded to tell him about grades of those steels.

His eyes glazed over after about two minutes of this, since he was convinced that I was making all of it up.(Shrug)

In the end, it's hard to explain the phenomenon to most people. They have their mind's made up about what is what, and that is the end of it.

Posted by: -B at June 28, 2007