I want to duracoat my AR10 but I am a little bit apprehensive with it being my first time. I hate to pop the cherry on such an expensive venture, so I was thinking about trying on my 1911 first. I was looking at the lauercustomweaponry page and saw all of this  "degreaser" "finishing" and "thinner" stuff. Do I really need all of that or can I just spray it down. I am going to go with magpul's FDE and was wondering if the color match is close  (#74 or something). So far I have a Troy Ind rail in FDE and a PRS in FDE. I am trying to figure out if I need to do them or not that is why I am going to hit the 1911 first, for a color comparison.

Also after reading the complaints on the sprayer I was thinking about buying one from lowes for ~40 bucks and was wondering if that was a good idea or not.



Any tips or suggestions would be much appreciated.

Good luck with that.  After you figure out what you are doing I might get you to show me how to do a couple things.

I have used GunKote a good bit.  As a degreaser I used cheap (non-"green")brake cleaner.  It works fine.  For a thinner i used MEK.  I do not know what a "finisher" would be.  Go to Harbor Freight and get your paint gun there.  they have a hobby kit for about $10 but they also have a $15-20 unit that is much nicer and gives you more control.  Wear a mask and gloves when handling the brake cleaner or the MEK, also when spraying the Duracoat.  





 

Me and my brother did the duracoat and KG gun kote( bake on) on our guns. We didn't use any kit from Duracoat, but we bought a high quality air brush, paint thiner and we have a small air compressor(bought this long time ago). We build an oven when do the KG Gun-Kote.
 You have to willing to mess up and don't expect a perfect finish on the first time. If you mess up the paint job just use paint thiner,clean it up and repaint. You have to try,try and try again,again and again. It's not an easy job,but worth the effort.
 This is my brother AR with Gun-Kote FDE and OD Green.

 
 My .284 win that we used Duracoat OD Green,Woodland Green and FDE on the stock.

 

  A closer look at the stock.

 

What big brother is saying. KG Gunkoat works best on metal surfaces and Duracoat on everything else you can't put in an oven.
The $20 airbrush kit is only good for one or two uses.

Edited for ( Gunkoat doesn't come off with thinner after it's been bake. The only way to remove it is to sandblast.)
Dureacoat can be removed with thinner and alotttttttt of time.
Duracoat will burned and flake off if painted on a metal surface in a high heat area like the barrel or a can.

Duracoat when painted on a 1911 lays thicker then the other brand. So be careful not to get too much on the rail that the slide rides on and the dust cover if it's a close fit pistol already.

thanks.

I was mostly worried about the color match of my FDE PRS stock but i think I will just hose it all down. I think I will take the advice and go to harbor freight and just order the colors I want with the hardening and flatner stuff.

I will post my mess ups finished product when I get it done after a while

I must say, when I saw that AR and 1911 I was very impressed.  Yal did a great job on them.  The finish on the 1911 and the AR barrel looked that they came that way from the factory.