Let me wipe the egg off my beard, Ted, and tell you I'm 56! I just never saw any guns with that "hardening" before. You mention some "lower end guns" used that finish - that may explain it. I grew up in the biggest castle in Indian Orchard and was raised with only the best of the best of EVERYthing, snif sniff. Mayhaps one of the butlers had a gun like this, but I'll never know. Father had to shoot them dead for wrinkling his best suits. By the way, where is my friend Lowell Glenthorne?