by Hawkeye » Tue Dec 27, 2022 7:59 pm
If you build like I do, I don't buy for color or painted slides because I paint my own slides to match my frame for a solid looking build. I buy raw when I can to save a few bucks but most venders that sell raw slides don't give you a break on price. For that reason, I look for blemished slides and depending on the blemish you can fix them before you paint. Here is the slide I found over a year ago.
There are a few things I would call blemishes.
One is the rough mill work in the side window. You can see mill lines that will show up after painting.
I have seen slide that have these mill marks on slides painted and sold that way. We should not have to pay high dollar price for this type of work but if you can find them marked down you can polish them yourself.
There are a two more things I would call blemishes.
One: more mill marks in the bottom of the vent cuts.
Two: sharp corners, all the rest of the cuts have some sort of radius on them but not on the window cuts so I added some small radius on them.
All fixed and I saved over $100 on this slide.
One more blemish is a ding at the front site hole, but it will be covered up by the front site.