Darken aluminum?

kingston73

kingston73

Joined
Oct 14, 2013
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Im wondering if it's possible to darken aluminum? I just got an unpainted pocket clip from benchmade that I was able to heat and change the color to a case hardened look and wondered if you can do something similar with aluminum?
 
Not with heat.
As a matter of fact, you may have annealed your pocket clip and ruined it.
 
I really doubt ruined the clip, it wasn't much heat or for very long. As for the darkening aluminum, I was curious if there was any way to do it, not just with heat.
 
Aluminum will not darken with heat but it will dull if a sheen is present.
There is always AlumaBlack. There are other products like gun blue, gun brown, and something for brass that I can't recall that could work with aluminum, but they may take some experimentation.
 
Thanks for the ideas. Are those paints? I think I'll just end up buying a new backspacer for my scales instead, I was willing to experiment on my clip because benchmade sent me two of them so I still have an unaltered one.

FYI benchmade is great, asked for a single clip and they sent me two, free of charge!
 
No not paints. It's a surface treatment reactant.
Not exactly but somewhat akin to a forced patina.
 
The only way to effectively color aluminum is to anodize it, or paint it.
If you changed the color of your steel clip, you probably damaged it.
 
I have also heard of people using a thin sheen of olive oil or veg oil and heating it in an oven to 350° for a few minutes.
 
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