Brownells retro waffle magazine decolors???

My brownells waffle mag retro/repros arrived today.
i had black hands just from unpackaging the mags, the paint of the mag is more on my hands now than on the magazine.
do yours discolor also so fast?
wiped it off with a little oiled patch but it only got worse.
seems like they are just spray-painted with a color-can.
i can see the pure metal and i didn't even insert the mag or loaded it.

have the original 1950's/1960's ones also been painted black or were they grey like the 20rds mags of the NAM era rifles?

what did the original waffle mags looked like (color)?

I think Brownells put some sort of dry rust protection on the magazines. I used a lot of EWL and a clean rag and got as much black gunk to come off as I could. The magazine is still completely black, has a little shine from the EWL, but neither the EWL nor the finish is coming off in my hands any longer.

I know that the original magazines were made from stainless steel (while these are supposed to be phosphated carbon steel), but with the exception of a few early rifles in the hands of museums and collectors that appear to have matte stainless magazines, most of them appear to be black in color. Whether this was achieved through paint or some form of surface conversion treatment (like bluing), I do not know.

ETA: I see in the technical discussion you said you were going to call Brownells. I'd be curious to hear what they have to say about it.

Thanks for the info on the museum and collector magazines and their color.

Slip/EWL is the same like breakfree CLP, right?

i used WD40 on my mag and got the black nearly completly off were i softly rubbed it with a cloth and WD40, seems that there are some different lots of mags. my 2nd mag looks just fine, oiled it with WD40, no black getting loose any more, but still completly black, the firtst one looks terrible, the 2nd one great.

Yeah, EWL is just a sort of CLP.

roger that, thanks for the information :)