Anodizing Help

Joined
Jul 18, 2022
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Hi. I'm trying my hand at anodizing and have a few questions I'm hoping someone can help me with.

Using a Boos Blade Smoke TM1. Use whink rust remove to strip the old anodization. Dip into distilled water to clean it off. Spray with Greased Lightning and scrub with a toothbrush. Another distilled water bath.
For the ano solution I just sprinkle a generous amount of baking soda into a pint of water. By no means would I say alot of baking soda though. Maybe this is part of my problem? Negative of my batteries are just hooked up to stranded copper wire in the ano solution, and I dip the piece in with titanium wire attached to the positive side of the batteries. I think Im doing this mostly correct, but would be happy to change something. Oh and I wear rubber gloves to keep my hand oils off of everything.


1.) I'm using whink rust removed to strip the factory coating off my Boos Blade knife. It took..... probably 10 minutes to strip each piece. However, when I strip my own anodizing it's off in a couple of seconds. Whats happening here? Is a factory finish somehow significantly different from the baking soda/distilled water and 9V batteries setup?

2.) Is whink a good choice for stripping or is there something better?

3.) The factory finish was nice and very smooth, but after stripping with whink and reanodizing, its .... nowhere near the smooth finish that it used to be. Do people typically coat these in some protective clear to protect the finish? Mine feels and looks very much like rough bare metal if that makes any sense. It also seems super prone to dirt. I wash my hands before touching the knife, but there is still some residue or something that doesn't appear with any of my other titanium knives.

4.) After anodizing, do you need to do anything to keep it looking its absolute best? I intentionally put knife oil on my anodization and it looks like shit, but that wasn't the case with the factory ano job.

Am I don't anything clearly way wrong? Any advice wold be greatly appreciated!
 
A lot going on in this post. I will start with, I dont claim to be an expert, but it have done quite a few ano jobs with great success.
The top section about actually anodizing (not removing). Wear gloves the entire time, anodizing is a very clean process. Clean your parts with degreaser and a brush first, then rinse in distilled water. Then etch (Whinks in your case), then rinse again, and then into your electro bath (distilled water and baking soda, stirred well. should be clear). If your bath is cloudy, add more water or use less baking soda. Negative should go to the cathode. I would not use copper wire! Titanium, stainless steel, or even aluminum foil. You want your cathode at least twice the surface area of the titanium part you are anodizing.
Now to the #'ed questions
1. Whink should NEVER take that long to remove ano! It is an acid, and works FAST (too fast really). Different colors of ano take a little longer to remove because the oxide layer is thicker (high voltage colors). Your 9v battery setup is probably a lower voltage, and comes off quicker, but it should be seconds faster, not minutes. Too long in Whinks eats your Titanium, and pretty quickly. You can also delude it with distilled water to make it less aggressive.
2. Whicks works, but you have to be very careful. Yes there is better, much better. Multi-Etch
3. The amount of time you left it in Whinks has ruined the smooth finish. You will have to re-finish it. Either by sanding or blasting. My biggest concern with the amount of time in Whinks, is did it eat away the critical internal milling dimensions (stop pin, lock bar, etc)
4. No you just leave it. Oil makes the anodized Ti look different or bad in some cases. This is normal, just the way oils react on anodized titanium. With that said, low voltage colors show the oils way more than high voltage colors. Lower voltage colors tend to get more "grayish" with oils, high voltage does it too but considerable less noticeable. A simple clean with alcohol will bring the color back.
 
This is all great info. Thank you. I think I'm going to try to get some polishing media for my tumbler and tumble them for a while and then reanodize and see how it goes.
 
This is all great info. Thank you. I think I'm going to try to get some polishing media for my tumbler and tumble them for a while and then reanodize and see how it goes.
I don’t think tumbling is going to be enough. It’s will just stonewash the ano more than likely.
a fine (#10) glass bead blast will make it nice and smooth. Perfect for a bright ano
 
Its in the tumbler now. I'm curious to see what it'll end up looking like. I definitely don't have access to a bead blaster, so I'll have to find a place in town that isn't going to try to charge me an arm and a leg to do these tiny parts.
 
They came out looking and feeling smooth and awesome, though definitely a little bit scratched up. I need to find a way to do something similar to bead blasting at home. Maybe just tumbling with different media and accepting that it won't be as effective as blasting.
 
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