PN> Gotta be somebody here-a-bouts what can answer this.  The last NIB
PN>Colt  Commander I bought was a flat black, the dealer referred dto it
PN>as  "parkerized."  Is "parkerized" one specific finish, or a generic
PN>term  indicating  a class of finishes, or ???
I went and looked it up in my 1930 Mechanical Engineers Handbook (love
these old technical books ):
Phosphatic Coatings for Rust Proofing Iron and Steel (Eckelmann, Chem. &
Met. Eng'g., Dec 24, 1919)
Iron or steel articles immersed for 3 or 4 hours in a boiling solution,
made by mixing iron filing with concentrated H3PO4 (sufficient to form a
paste) and then adding to weak phosphoric acid, become coated with a
rust-resisting deposit of basic ferrous phosphate.  This Coslett process
has been improved by the addition of an oxidizing agent and is known as
_Parkerizing_.  The advantages of this latter process over the Bower-
Barff and similar process are in greater cheapness and simplicity and
the use of low temperatures so that the physical properties of tempered
steel and of magnets are unaffected by it.
The phosphate coating, in itself, affords only a very slight degree of
protection against corrosion.  Oiling the coating improves the corrosion-
resistance greatly and imparts an attractive lustrous black appearance.
Coatings of this kind are not suitable for severe out-of doors weather.
Then, to make it confusing again, I went and looked it up in by 1974
Machinery's Handbook.  They didn't list Parkerizing per sey, but had
numerous techniques covering several pages about coloring steels.
Here's a quick rundown of the colloring choices they had:
Niter Process of Bluing Steel
Bluing Steel by Heat treatment
Blue-black Finish
Black Finish
Gun Metal Finish (many different combinations)
Browning Iron and Steel
To Produce a Bronze Color
To Produce a Gray Color
Mottled Coloring
Copering Solution
So I think it's a whole bunch of collor possibilities.  Complete with
colors that change over time as well.  Especially things like Garands
that happily turned green because of the cosmoline storage.
The Winchester '97 could be had parkerized, it was a dark brown.
Several of the current blackpowder guns can be had parkerized, and they
are light tan.
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