Not to hijack the thread, but I came across some older project photographs that you may find interesting. A guy came to me with a really banged up AR. It's previous user had etched his name in the forward assist housing. He wanted the whole thing fixed and refinished.

Here’s the upper receiver (disassembled) the way it came to me:


I preped the upper as mentioned in my previous post, then I used Durafil (made by the manufacturers of Duracoat) to fill in the etched area. This is applied by airbrush or HVLP (airbrush in this instance) in coats, then sanded smooth. Here’s a picture of the Durafil applied:


Then I Duracoated the upper:


This is the finished product:

(Sorry...these photos are not up to my normal standard, but good enough to be informative.)