Hi Adam.

I have become something of an "expert" recently regarding the various forms of coating. I too posted the same question as you and received conflicting replies. I ultimate received by far the best considered opinion from Mark Brown, the owner of Brown’s Precision, for which I am grateful. I trust he will not mind if I share his reply.

To summarise: If good coating is correctly applied it will wear better than any blueing. Unlike powder it can be used on all tolerance parts and can be applied inside the bolt, trigger, firing pin, under sights, inside scope mounts, etc. It will wear quickly where you have parts rubbing together but, apparently, one of the benefits of Teflon is that it penetrates the steel and so it will still not rust. (How, I do not know.) On tolerance parts it must be applied very thinly so it will not affect any part of the tolerance parts.

If I were building anything other than a "best" European gun, where blueing is aesthetically essential, I would definitely go with "good" Teflon coating. Powder is too thick, needs to be baked at too higher temperature and, I understand, cannot be applied to tolerance parts. I must add that I have no experience of either powder or Teflon, but personally would definately rely on Mark Brown's advice.

With regard to the Charles Daly stainless actions. I understand these are made in Yugoslavia. If they are anything like the Czech actions, and there is no reason to suppose they are not, they should be good. However, all inexpensive "eastern" actions need work to operate really well, including machining the magazine specifically to the chosen calibre. Too many just leave them at a "general" size. This is important for perfect feed and to stop ammunition "bouncing around"; particularly if you wish to hunt DG. I am not an engineer, but stainless steel is much harder so it is important to check whether they can, like conventional steel, be "worked" for a reasonable price.

I hope all this helps.

Martin