- Joined
- Jan 29, 2005
- Messages
- 6,768
Howdy.
Scored this beauty Friday on sale at Big 5 for $19.99 and tax. Knowing the frame is titanium I was thinking on dismantling it and 'doing my stuff' before I had even bought it.
After work I made some joe and got my torx drivers out and took her apart , to see what was what.
Here is a "before" picture borrowed from another site.
Later on that night I tried some anodizing with batteries as demonstrated by our good friends STR and Oregon , to be honest that was a waste of time and batteries. I managed to get one side an awesome purple blue but it took nearly 45 minutes , by then all 4 of my 12 volt batteries were pretty dead.
So I thought for a minute and cleaned both sides up and put them bottom down on the burner on my stove (also cleaned the element first) , in under ten minutes both of them had colored (mostly) evenly to a pretty blue
Also a note , STR was right was rain about corrosion when anodizing with electricity - be cautious or you can mess up your titanium.
I also did some simple filework on the little backspine (plastic) , polished the lock and all torx screws , took out the rubber nib from the thumbstud and filled it brass dust mixed with superglue , sanded that down even and polshed it , then polished the pivots and heat colored the thumbstud screw and pocket clip and used a bit of flitz on the G10 which made the blue/black/grey stand apart more , also I filed down the obnoxiously big pivot screws and polished those , also gently sanded the G10 before polishing to make the knife more 'pocket friendly'. The final touch before re-assembly was a judiscious polishing of the blade.
The final result is a much more appealing knife.
A final note. This knife was regularly priced at a ridiculously high $120.00 !!
I mentioned that to the store guy and he just shrugged but honestly I cannot see the justification for selling this knife over $40.00 - the Steel AUS118 is good and the handles are solid titanium but otherwise I dont see the high cost. Anyways....
Sound off ! let me know what you think about this job - Dont be shy.
Todd
Scored this beauty Friday on sale at Big 5 for $19.99 and tax. Knowing the frame is titanium I was thinking on dismantling it and 'doing my stuff' before I had even bought it.
After work I made some joe and got my torx drivers out and took her apart , to see what was what.
Here is a "before" picture borrowed from another site.
Later on that night I tried some anodizing with batteries as demonstrated by our good friends STR and Oregon , to be honest that was a waste of time and batteries. I managed to get one side an awesome purple blue but it took nearly 45 minutes , by then all 4 of my 12 volt batteries were pretty dead.
So I thought for a minute and cleaned both sides up and put them bottom down on the burner on my stove (also cleaned the element first) , in under ten minutes both of them had colored (mostly) evenly to a pretty blue
Also a note , STR was right was rain about corrosion when anodizing with electricity - be cautious or you can mess up your titanium.
I also did some simple filework on the little backspine (plastic) , polished the lock and all torx screws , took out the rubber nib from the thumbstud and filled it brass dust mixed with superglue , sanded that down even and polshed it , then polished the pivots and heat colored the thumbstud screw and pocket clip and used a bit of flitz on the G10 which made the blue/black/grey stand apart more , also I filed down the obnoxiously big pivot screws and polished those , also gently sanded the G10 before polishing to make the knife more 'pocket friendly'. The final touch before re-assembly was a judiscious polishing of the blade.
The final result is a much more appealing knife.
A final note. This knife was regularly priced at a ridiculously high $120.00 !!
I mentioned that to the store guy and he just shrugged but honestly I cannot see the justification for selling this knife over $40.00 - the Steel AUS118 is good and the handles are solid titanium but otherwise I dont see the high cost. Anyways....Sound off ! let me know what you think about this job - Dont be shy.
Todd
