Heat coloring titanium? Technique help, please!

[Chiro75]

I have a small piece of 6Al/4V titanium that I want to play around with. I wanted to experiment with heat coloring Ti, and I know what/how to do it, but specifically for this type of "camo"/Strider style coloring, what do you think the technique is? If I had to guess, I would say maybe a special fitting on the end of the torch, heat in the middle of each "stripe" and as the heat dissipates from the center you'll get the variations in color, then go to the next section you want to do and on down the line. Or am I totally wrong? (pictures are by Eric Blair from Usual Suspects Network):

 

[Ansoknives]

you need oxygen setup for that...beadblast first and then heat..I use a regular torch on some of my works and it gets more organic...

 

[Robert Marotz]

well you can do the striping with lower temps but it's easier if you have mapp or oxy flame

heat to bronze coloration throughout and then simply make higher-temp stripes to blue/cyan. The purple transitions before the blue are simply in the oxide spectrum order that you get. If you use lower/slower heat you don't really need to color to bronze first, as the heat will diffuse over more material when slowly applied.

Either way, it's not terribly difficult to get the striping effect. Heat up a rod to the starting straw/bronze colors, then hold it in a place (removing flame periodically to allow the surface to oxidize) for a little bit longer until it turns blue, then move to a second spot. It will retain the temp pretty well in air so you can just move to the next chosen spot to heat to blue, and repeat.