I read a couple comments from people saying the at home Cerakote is no better than Duracote. I’ve done Duracote before, so I’m inclined to do that again. Any experience with this?

I switched to using Molly resin, at home, well over a decade ago. Such a great product. I have nothing against cerakote and I think it's better than DuraCoat. I just prefer Molly resin.

I’m not familiar with that. I’ll look into it.

The older Duracoat gets, the harder it seem to be. I find it to be less fiddly to apply,especially when multiple colors are involved.

Durabake is a baked on finish, similar to Duracoat but without the drying time. Looks good. I prefer it to Duracoat.

OP, when you say "at home," what do you mean exactly?

There are bake cure (H Series) and air cure (C Series) Cerakote. Both require proper surface prep and cleanliness throughout the process. Whatever the product, surface preparation and sterilization is the key to a good finish.

In terms of how the coating looks when properly cured (whether ambient, or oven), I think Cerakote is a superior product over Duracoat, hands down.

Don't attempt Cerakote without a proper sandblasting setup and dedicated oven.

It also takes a little while to get the paint gun dialed in and your spray method perfected before things start looking really good.  For very small parts you'll probably be ok.  But if you're talking about doing entire guns with a lot of rounded edges, inside nooks, etc. you might be better off having a professional do it.

After about a year using my 12x12 shop for disassembly, prep, spray, and bake, I finally got to the point where I wasn't afraid to take on projects for other people.  Although I was limited to what I could do by using a smaller dedicated smoker (it never had food in it).  I could ARs, up to 20" barrels, some shotguns, etc.

Kinda of a big leap to get into the whole scene.  I ended up selling the house that had that shop so I retired from Cerakote but I did have a lot of fun doing it once I learned the tricks.


I did use Durabake a few years before I did Cerakote but spraying from an aerosol can was much harder than an Iwata.

Norrell's moly resin is similar to Cerakote: baked on, very durable. Color choices used to be somewhat limited, but quite a few choices now. Always has been a good value (price wise). I have been using it for 10 years. Really good stuff. Not at all like Cerakote where you supposedly need to have "technical training"...if you can use an airbrush to paint model airplanes and cars, you can do Norrell's.
https://www.norrells.com/store/

Does Molly Resin work on plastic too? Will it stay on a grip?