You also have FICMrepair.com

 

Update: brought heads to 2nd shop. This machinist believes
the outside scratch isn’t of to much concern as the HG should seal it. However, he didn’t like a couple light scratches through the middle cylinders, they go through both middle fire rings. He thinks it looks like someone got sloppy and dragged the head on a bench with some metal
debris under it and doesn’t think it’s a casting mark. He also confirmed these are definitely new castings, and that the machine shop In question has been doing all of Ford’s rebuilds/machine work for years (At least locally). I don’t think ford is still selling bare castings for the 6.0 but apparently these heads have been sitting there for “years”. He knows the owner and was surprised he wouldn’t take a pass off just to make everyone happy. Looks like my wallet is going to be getting a little lighter …

TMT, the 2nd shop told me being new castings it shouldn’t be an issue with valve seat depth, but if he has to take off more material than he thinks (.002) then he will be letting me know and we’ll go from there. He also said I could probably just buff out the high spots on the scratches with some fine sandpaper. At this point I’ll feel better knowing the whole deck is consistent and free of blemishes, so I left it with him and he’s going to resurface the one head.

at this point I just want to start assembly, its been over a month without my truck, and nearly two weeks back and forth with Ford over this head blemish.
Yahiko, I’ve contacted several of the big vendors except Ficmfepair. (I just recently got a ficm from
them and wasn’t all to impressed, but that’s another story.) the other vendors only had 18mm stock

 

Now that you showed them, I would agree with his assessment that they were dragged on a surface with a few debris.

You have to know I would have lapped the surface and see how it was. It takes a lot of work to hand lap 0.0005" off of iron heads. But you're getting somewhere.

 

most definitely, I don’t have those skills yet and probably would have messed them up… I do have one bad head tho sitting on the floor, perhaps I can experiment with that one for the next time, nothing to lose on a cracked head right?

side note, how is your oil pan holding up after redoing it? I ended up doing mine as well, couldn’t get my hands on the lps primer, so just used rust mort and the duplicolour engine primer+paint. Also spent a few more bucks on the ex manifolds with some of that high heat paint and numerous heat cycles in the bbq



Finished product



Sandblasted and rust mort

 

I think you are fine with what you’ve done. The pan is fine, the exhaust manifolds show a little rust through. Other than motorcycles, I’ve always had some rust come through.