well....it's not the most durable finish I've ever used, as the matte gets flat and shiney spots pretty easily. Another problem is that it only works on stainless steel as the abrasive etches off any bluing or rust preventative treatment. The nice thing is that I have a compressor, a sandblasting gun and a 16 lb can of the aluminum oxide----I can touch up the gun about a hundred times before I'll have to buy more of the alum oxide--I could also reuse the stuff over and over if I ever put my blasting tank together, but that's a project for another day.
Oh....the grit used is so fine, it won't obscure even the faintest of roll marks or stampings. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself, but after the blasting, the marks on mine actually looked sharper than before....go figure?
Because the finish is simply a bare, ultra-fine abrasive blast, it provides a VERY positive grip---you're not going to lose your grip when charging the slide after doing this treatment. The down side is that it makes it a cast iron BITCH to clean. The carbon that just wipes off a polished slide requires gunscrubber or carb cleaner to get out of the microscopic nooks and crannies. If you look close on the pic, you'll see that the safety lever and beavertail are a lot brighter than the rest of the gun. I was going for a pseudo 2 tone look and left them bright ss.
It cost me exactly $32 to do the Para....I already had the sandblasting equipment. I like the way it looks, hate the way it cleans up, ambiguous about the lack of durability. If you're going to pay somebody else to do it, go with the NP3 or hard chrome. If you're talking about DIY, the french grey is easy to do and easy to touch up when it needs it.