WMD Guns — The Arsenal of Firearm Plating Technologies

The best gun coatings and treatments involve a lot more than just buying chemicals and following directions. They require a skilled team of engineers, gunsmiths, chemists and metallurgists coming together to design components, building each product with the intent of applying the latest in firearm finishing technology. 

At WMD Guns, we go beyond the basics by designing our products in-house to suit specific firearm platings. Everything made under our brand is exhaustively tested and produced to meet precise specifications after undergoing its planned finished process.

We’re called “the arsenal of firearm plating technologies” for a reason, and it’s because we can apply any of the industry’s most popular coatings and get unparalleled performance. 

Learn more about the different types of gun coatings available at WMD Guns and what they can offer for firearms and their components. 

Types of OEM Firearm Coating Services Available Through WMD

WMD offers a full spectrum of firearm-specific platings and coatings ranging from decorative ceramic topcoats to high-performance proprietary finishes. We can apply these formulas to many types of products, and we have coating services for OEMs available for those interested in working with us on volume orders. 

With our new X-Coatings factory in North Carolina, we’re set up to deliver industry-leading coatings at scale. Learn more about our capabilities and what makes our finishes outperform the competition.

NiB-X® Nickel Boron

NiB-X® is our proprietary nickel boron formulation. Since this alloy was developed in the 1960s, it has seen several generations used for plating, each of which offers a different combination of characteristics. Many suppliers plating their parts with this material use DMAB nickel boron, a softer formula best suited for electronics thanks to its solderability. Some use generation 3 NiB, a formula harder than DMAB but containing as little as 2.5% boron content.

WMD Guns was a pioneer in applying this alloy to firearms, which resulted in us developing our own unique formula. WMD’s proprietary NiB-X® contains up to 6% boron, giving it a hardness of 70+ on the Rockwell scale and a .06 coefficient of friction. Being almost impervious to chemical damage, highly resistant to heat, inherently slick and all but impenetrable, it’s everything you want for your firearm’s protection. 

NiB-X® maintains its properties throughout the coating and bonds tightly to a metallic substrate for a gun finish that continues to perform for thousands of rounds without chipping, flaking or peeling — and it comes with a lifetime warranty to prove it. 

On top of everything else, the striking, brushed silver of a nickel boron gun finish always looks great. Still, we recognize that the infinite range of options for today’s popular firearms leaves lots of room for customization. Fortunately, NiB-X® can be duplexed with sublayers or topcoats for unique colors or specific properties customers may desire.

Nitromet Salt Bath Nitrocarburizing (Melonite, Tennifer, Black Nitride)

Nitromet is among the most popular coatings on the market for lining a barrel bore. This rugged chemical finish boasts a 30% longer lifespan than hard chrome and a hardness of 55 on the Rockwell C scale. 

Salt bath nitrocarburizing is performed via a high-temperature diffusion process, so we can only apply nitromet to components capable of withstanding high heat. Examples include steel receivers, barrels, gas blocks and magazines. 

Electroless Nickel

An electroless nickel coating is a dense alloy of nickel and phosphorus. Our engineered electroless nickel plating processes can be tailored to provide various levels of hardness, lubricity and resistance to wear, abrasion and corrosion. We offer low-, medium- and high-phosphorous plating processes.

Electroless Nickel With Teflon

This coating is an electroless nickel (EN) with Teflon particles co-deposited within the matrix. The formula is designed to release Teflon particles as the nickel wears, allowing it to maintain its resilience and lubricity. Electroless nickel with Teflon is usually used in the mold and die industry for its release properties, as it doesn’t work as well in high-wear and high-heat applications.

Black Electroless Nickel With Boron Nitride

A black nickel coating containing boron nitride is better suited for withstanding high temperatures and pressures than an EN Teflon variant. While it’s not as rugged as NiB-X®, it does offer sufficient wear resistance for some use cases in the firearms industry. 

Physical Vapor Deposition (PVDs) and Diamond Like Carbon (DLC) Films

Multiple PVD coatings are available to suit various part applications. Depending on their formulation, PVDs are among the harder coatings on the market, and they can still be made very thin (2-4 microns). However, most films are line-of-sight only, so they don’t offer protection on every surface. Most coatings in this class have high temperature tolerance, good impact strength and excellent abrasion resistance, so they work well for firearms. They’re also available in attractive metallic hues. 

Ceramic Gun Coatings

Ceramic finishes come in many eye-catching colors and offer a degree of protection for gun components.

While a ceramic coating provides aesthetic and protective benefits when applied on its own, it will eventually wear through, scratch or flake. At WMD Guns, we apply ceramic colors over a base layer of our NiB-X® nickel boron finish for long-lasting substrate protection and performance even after the ceramic has degraded.

About Our Facilities and Application Practices

All WMD finishes are applied in facilities certified to industry standards. Our NiB-X coatings are certified to ASTMB607 and/or AMS2433C standards. Nitromet conforms to ASTM 2753.

What Makes WMD One of the Best Firearm Coaters and Platers in the Industry

Proven technology and stringent quality standards are vital to a quality firearm plating service, but there’s more to staying at the forefront of the industry. At WMD, we’re gun guys too, so we’ve cultivated expertise in all the tolerances and variables that are crucial for optimizing firearm performance. We tailor every coating used to the parts’ intended application. 

As a testament to how committed we are to delivering exceptional coated gun parts, we do extensive range testing to ensure our finishes meet your most demanding performance standards. Our NiB-X® coating has successfully survived a 30,000-round torture test with no chipping, flaking or wear-through.

For more information on the types of firearm finishes we offer and which is the best gun coating for a specific application, contact our team.