I had a Kimber that I had gotten in trade with the intention of making it my main beater gun.  It was an older Series I, but post Clackamas.  I was confident it was not one of the stainless guns, but I did not anticipate how many parts would be stainless.  I had examined it well, and was surprised to see upon re-bluing it how many parts were blackened stainless.  

I'm just posting this as an illustration that there is no rhyme nor reason to what is stainless on a blued Kimber.  The only thing that was supposed to be non blued was the trigger.  I've seen stainless frames/slides, but never this:

Shoot it and do not worry about how it looks.

Thanks for the advice.    Looks are not too important to me on my guns, but this one is going up for sale.  The point was not whether it looks good or not, but just somehting to consider for those who get work done to their gun that would necessitate a refinish.  In this case, it was the cutting on the frame for the new beavertail and the carry bevel on the sharp edges.

Why thank you.  I really planned on selling it, but I went to the trouble of replacing all the MIM parts (except the stainless ones in the pics, which have replacements enroute).  It's a nice, bulletproof, reliable, no frills piece now, and I might just have to sell something else instead to thin the herd.

Nice work!  I've coated quite a few guns in DuraCoat and KG GunKote.  How is the CeraKote to work with?  Is it really any harder than the other coatings out there?  I'll probably stick to coating Kimbers in the future, but I really wanted this one blued.  No worries though, as I'll be replacing all the above parts with carbon steel non MIM parts.

Wierd. It's like they had an extra stainless pin set they needed to get rid of. The plunger tube is kind of an head-scratcher.

I was surprised to find out how many of the parts on my stainless Springer were not stainless. I guess they figured since it was a two tone model, they could mix it up.

In the Springer stailess guns, I can tell just by looking that there are many parts that are not stainless, but the Kimber had a perfect match on the parts.  The funny thing is that not even all the pins are stainless.  The hammer pin is carbon steel.  When I bead blasted this thing, the grip finish just would not come off the screws.  It was unreal.  I've never seen a finish like that, and I would love to know how they did it.  

The plunger tube looked just like the rest of the gun with regard to finish before I blasted it.  It even wore the same.  It also blasted off just like the rest.  At any rate, the parts will arrive Monday, and it will be all black like I intended.  I was going to sell it, but it's so nice, and I was just ditching it to try and get my 1911 collection under a dozen guns.  I came to my senses though.

Had the same problem with my Warrior.

After refinish:




After stainless replacement.


The freaking plunger and ejector are stainless on a steel frame!

Very nice Kimber,
I have a sister Classic Custom, KO34337, That Im slowly fixing up, Kinda my intro to 1911 smithin. So to speak. Still debating wither or not to refinish the pistol. I kinda like the "Patina"

Show us some pics!  

Quoted: Show us some pics!

Give me a week or two, The next step in the process is a Solid/Med v-series trigger, and some slantpro's. Ill post it up after that.........Udog