I've seen a few examples of guys doing scopes were are able to retain the white markings on an obviously black scope. How is this done? Anyone have any tricks they want to share?

I have a Nightforce F1 I'm about to coat, and would love to be able to make the white markings have a full "background" of the Cerakote color, as opposed to just taping off "square" areas around them.

Example:

I believe they would have to be re-painted afterwards.  Can't  see how you'd do it any other way.

I guess I should have followed that link on Google images ;)

Thank you for this!

As amazing as that is... I'm a bit terrified that my numbers/hashmarks on my scopes aren't deep enough for this.

If the markings are deep enough, some people are happy to simply coat over them and lose the contrast. I personally don't like that.

If they are deep, you can also color fill them.


Many optics are only laser marked, just through the anodizing or just altering the color of the anodizing, or using other methods of marking that the above methods ail not work with.


What I normally do is completely mask them off. Optics and rifles often have black parts that can't be coated, such as rubber or certain plastics, like buttpads and stuff, so I just bring small amounts of black through the finish, making controls of flashers, which really show carbon f they are light, black. This makes any black parts on the optic look natural. I usually make rings of black opposed to just rectangles, or i can mask with my templates and bring the shape of the pattern into it, or i cut rectangles with a pointed end to mask certain marlins in a way that defines a certain point. Examples below shoe different optics and methods done and needed and to customers' preferences.