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Hi 71,
The process is called 'parkerizing'.
The very dark gray (black) is manganese and the lighter gray is zinc.
It's quite straight forward to do at home.
Check out Palmetto Enterprises for info and supplies.
Regards,
Alan
PS: I believe what Eastwood offers is Zinc Phosphate paint.
I'm dumb on this one. Is this the process that is used to blacken chrome? I have some black chrome C6 replica wheels and i would like to blacken my door handles to match them.
Black phosphate was a way of preventing corrosion on metal used by GM and others. Black phosphate has a crystaline gray/black appearance on close exam. Black oxide is black and very uniformly dark. There was a person by the name of Grant Wong who was selling the BP solution on ebay which was applied hot to bare metal by using a crock pot or similar to heat the solution. Afterward a coat of wd40 was applied to keep the finish longer. I had a set of male hood locks done for my C3 way back and they came like nos.