Mail-in fiber laser engraving for pistol slides, plus machined porting. You ship a stripped slide, already in its final finish — we mark it and send it back. Nothing serialized ever enters this shop.
Slides and barrels only. No frames, no receivers, no complete firearms. If a serialized part turns up in the box, the package goes back unopened.
Stippling is frame work, and we don’t take frames. If you want texture on a grip, that’s someone else’s bench.
The mark is made in the surface you send us. Whatever finish you want that slide to wear, put it on first — then ship the bare slide by itself.
Which one you get depends entirely on what finish your slide is wearing when it lands on the bench.
On a coated slide the laser removes the coating and leaves the metal beneath it. A bright mark on a dark slide, crisp down to small type. The most common choice by a wide margin.
Low power, no material removed. Heat grows an oxide layer in the steel itself — a dark, smooth, corrosion-stable mark sitting flush with the surface.
More power, more passes, measurable depth cut into the metal. For texture, deep line art, or a mark you want to feel under a thumb.
Text, logos, line art or full-coverage patterns burned into a pistol slide. The mark is in the part — it won’t wear off, wash off, or peel.
Every job gets a proof render on your actual slide profile. Nothing runs until you approve it.
Ports machined through the slide and barrel to vent gas up off the muzzle. Less rise, flatter strings, faster back on target.
Porting leaves bare metal at the cut edges, so the finish rule is the reverse of engraving — how to ship a slide and barrel for porting.
Engraving carries a $300 minimum. Porting is priced per part, so a slide and barrel done together come to $250. Every job is confirmed in writing before anything is cut.
| Job | Priced | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Slide engraving | ||
| Any slide engraving | Minimum charge, per slide | From $300 |
| Porting | ||
| Barrel | Per barrel | $100 |
| Slide | Per slide | $150 |
| Slide and barrel together | The usual job | $250 |
| Add-ons | ||
| Art cleanup or vectorizing | Per file | Quoted |
| Return shipping, insured | Per package | At cost |
$300 is the floor on engraving, not the price of every job — coverage and art complexity set the rest, and you get a firm number in writing before we start. Optics-cut slides, non-standard profiles, and anything with existing engraving to work around are quoted individually. Turnaround is confirmed with your quote. Payment is due after you sign off on the proof and before the laser runs.
Five steps for an engraving job, then what changes when you’re sending a slide and barrel in for porting. Most of the jobs we have to turn away fail on step two or step three, and both are entirely avoidable.
Bare slide only. Barrel out, recoil spring assembly out, striker or firing pin assembly out, extractor out. If a part comes off without a press, take it off. We don’t disassemble parts for you and we don’t put heat near internals.
This is the one people get backwards. The mark is made by altering the surface you send us — the laser cuts the coating away to reveal the metal under it. Coat the slide afterward and you fill the engraving straight back in and lose it.
Cerakote, nitride, DLC, anodize, polished stainless — whatever you want that slide to wear for the rest of its life, put it on before it comes here.
Porting is the exception, and it runs the other way round. See below.
No frame. No receiver. No magazines. No ammunition. No serialized part of any kind. A stripped slide isn’t a firearm, and neither is a barrel — which is why either can go in the mail like any other parcel. The moment a serialized part joins them in the box, that stops being true for the whole package.
We hold no FFL and we don’t want to receive one. Anything serialized is refused and returned at your cost.
For engraving, send the slide by itself. For porting, the barrel travels with it.
Vector if you have it, 600 DPI or better if you don’t. Put your quote number in the subject line so it lands against the right job. If a file needs cleanup before it’ll run, we tell you before we charge you for it.
Bag the slide, wrap it so it can’t shift, rigid box. Print your quote confirmation and put it in the box. Insure the parcel for what the slide is worth to you — we photograph every part the moment it’s unpacked, but we can’t document what happened in transit.
It comes back stripped, in the same finish, packed the same way.
Steps 01, 03 and 05 are the same: strip the slide, nothing serialized, pack it properly and insure it. Three things are different, and the second one is the expensive one to get wrong.
Both parts come back stripped and unassembled, in one box. If you’re having engraving and porting done on the same slide, say so on the quote and we’ll sequence the two so neither one ruins the other.
Fill this out and you’ll get a written quote and a ship-to address back. Don’t send anything until you have both.
Copy the block below and email it to quotes@morpheuslaserworks.com, attaching your art file if you have one.