Last year, my wife and I found an indoor range in Bloomington, Illinois, with accommodations for a wheelchair. This prompted us to buy new pistols chambered in .22 Long Rifle and start shooting again. We chose .22 for all the usual reasons: cost, availability, recoil, etc. In addition, an indoor range typically has lanes of 25 meters at most, and shooting rifles at these distances is not much of a challenge unless you are using open sights and very small targets. Still, I can not say I am not tempted to do just that with a Ruger 10/22 sometime in the future. At any rate, I am breaking prolix as is my wont.
When we were shopping for pistols, I knew I wanted a Ruger Mark IV as it had been on my wish list for about thirty years (albeit as the Mark III at the time). My wife was sure she wanted a Ruger revolver. That meant a Single Six in stainless steel like the one I had years ago. However, when we got her hands on one, she decided it was now too heavy for her to shoot comfortably, and we started looking at other options. She finally decided on a Ruger SR 22 almost immediately after putting it in her hand. The problem was that she did not like the color. I set out looking for a Cerakote expert in our area and found Letz Hunt And Sport in Springfield, Illinois, was an official applicator of the products. Indeed, the reviews and images that had been shared were phenomenal.
To make a long story short, our lead time went from six weeks to almost nine months. I was sure it was going to be a disaster when we finally got to pick it up. Turns out, the lead time was worth it. The colors my wife had picked just were not working, and he actually took it upon himself to redesign the entire thing with the exception of the sea turtles she wanted on it. Let me just say, this guy is exactly what you think of when you think small gun shop owner. The difference is that he is also an artist. We were both blown away. He used a sand-to-sea colorway, and it was orders of magnitude better than anything we had envisioned. He coated the entire firearm and both magazines using this pattern and even threw in a matching mug as a token for the long wait.
If you live in Central Illinois and need a gun coated for practical reasons or just for fun, I highly recommend you take it to Letz and wait for him to do his magic. The wait is a nightmare, but now I want to take my Ruger Mark IV to him!
As always, I reserve the right to be wrong.