I’ve had the same package of Safariland lead-away wipes in my range bag for as long as I can remember...decades. I only used them to de-lead the forcing cones of my revolvers maybe once a year. I had some stubborn powder burns on the frame of an old 66-1 I have, and decided to try one of the cloths to clear it up. The carbon came right off, but did something unexpected.
When I got the 66-1 many years ago, it had a mirror finish, albeit dinged up quite a bit. When I had a gunsmith go through it and fix a number of issues it had (end shake, out of time, among many other things), he also “restored” the finish to a “factory” satin. Not something I requested be done, and it came out more Ruger satin than Smith satin, but it didn’t bother me enough to complain since he did a lot of work for a very minimal price. The abrasive he used left tactile grooves on all surfaces.
I was shocked to see that these de-leading wipes completely removed the small grooves cut by the abrasive, and produced an honest mirror shine in just a few minutes of rubbing. Definitely NOT what I was expecting, but a pleasant surprise, as I had thoughts of bringing a more bright finish back to it. BUT, it definitely caught my attention of how aggressive these wipes are, and how damaging this could be to a Ruger finish. There is a warning on the back about use on blued steel, but nothing about satin stainless.
Great product, but by all means, use with caution. It’s almost too effective.
The finish before using the cloth. Kind of hard to tell, but it’s more of a Ruger GP100/ SP101 satin....much more dull than a factory Smith.
This was the result with just a couple minutes of rubbing. Even with light pressure the cloth turns black with removed material very quickly. I only worked on this side of The barrel so far, but will most likely finish the entire revolver in this way.