Addition:
I have decided to leaveit as it is. It grew on me and I love how it turned out.
Ok, first let me preface this with a short story.
This was NOT how I wanted the gun to turn out at all.
I called up Canyon Creek Customs to do some work on my XD as I had heard nothing but good reports about them. I dealt with Rich and he was great on the phone.
So I asked for a replication of a pic I had seen on this forum (an XD9 SC) of a slide color... it looked like a rich, vibrant HIGH GLOSS blue. I had to have it. I asked for the engravings to be filled with silver to match the silver work he was doing on all my small parts to complete the tri-tone look.
So after 3 weeks of being gone, I got worried that my gun had not come back yet. I called Rich and was told they do not do one gun at a time, he makes you wait for him to acquire enough customer's guns to do a "cycle" of work. Hmmm, sure woulda loved to have known that before. Anyway....
So after nearly 5 weeks of waiting, my gun arrives back to me. I open the package like a child ripping into a Christmas package, and when it was all revealed i nearly cried.
What I sent out was a bad-ass V10 ported XD40 pistol. What I got back looks much more akin to a child's squirt gun that daddy painted in the garage.
For some reason they filled my slide serrations in silver (I never asked for that) and it looks TERRIBLE & cheap.
The rich high gloss blue is actually a milky, dull medium blue PAINT... yes, it looks as if I took a rattle can of Krylon and painted my slide.
There are also smears of silver throughout the slide, and in the openings where the ported barrel shows through. It looks like this operation was performed by a 12 year old hopped up on 5 cups of coffee. Much of the filled silver areas have missing paint as well (look in the serrations).
The silver small parts look great however.
The only part I REALLY love is my mirror polished barrel and the polished end of my guiderod assembly. Why? Because I sent that
elsewhere and it was done to PERFECTION and done in less than a week or so.
I will hand it to Rich though... when I called to complain he was really quite nice about it all, and clearly his concern was to make me happy. The only thing is that to remove the look of the silver in the serrations... the slide must be refinished, and I don't know if I want to do that. I don't know WHAT to do at this point. I don't think the finish will ever be how I want it, and I also don't want coating after coating piling up on my slide as that may cause reliability issues later.
Anyway, here are the pics. Believe me... the pics look WAY better than the real thing.
More images in next post... man I hate this image per post limitation!