I'm heading to Boise to visit my brother this weekend to do some shooting. While I am there, he wants my help in refinishing two of his guns with Gun-Kote. My experiences with GK are limited to finishing over parkerizing.

One of the guns is a Tikka T3 Lite Stainless. The barrel and action have a rough non-shining surface like it was bead or sand blasted. Can I degrease and coat directly over the stainless? Or do I need to prime it with something first?

The second guns is a Taurus 1911 with a blued finish. Same questions: Can I degrease and coat directly over the bluing, or do I have to remove it first, or prime it, or bead blast it?

Thanks for your help guys.

Sandblasting for prep is always best.  However, I have KG koted over blued and stainless pieces with no problems. It will work in that it does stick and it does provide the corrosion resistance.  However, blueing is a form of controlled rusting and the coating is only as strong as the weakest layer and if the blueing chips off, so will the coating that is attached to it. If it's for some not too expensive gun that you just don't want to rust out every time you go out, it would work.  As for stainless, it too will stick, but if the surface is super smooth, it will be like coating glass and more suseptable to chipping and wear.  KG has a product called K-phose which is a surface prep and acs like a mild etching component to provide bite prior to KG koting.  I found that the stuff doesn't seem to make anything better or worse.