I Blackened Titanium For Real, As Dark As Zirc

Pittknife said:
Alright guys,

Here is how I do Black Titanium, there are a couple other makers that have done a similar process Pat Hammond, Lee Williams, Richard Rogers & Frank Fischer.
Have fun and it's a lot of work to get this right.

first prepare the surface by cleaning it thoroughly.

Then I use a propane torch (not MAP, the map gas heats up too hot and warps the Ti) to heat up the Ti section by section until red hot. This usually produces a mutlicolored effect ended with light blueish hue.

I immediately dunk it in a cool solution I made using distilled water & windex.

*Wire-brushing, I have a steel wire wheel I modified, making it less dense by clipping the wires leaving only some long strainds.

I take the part while wet and do a light brush on the wire wheel, not applying any pressure, just enough to remove the colors.

I repeat this process one more time.

By this time, the Ti will have some dark spots and some colored spots. This begins the next phase.

I heat up the colored spots to red hot, and give the rest of the scale some heat but not to red hot.

I dunk to cool off & then do the light brushing.

I repeat until all the color spots are gone and everything is consistent black.

This can take anywhere from 10 cycles to 20 cycles. If I want it lighter at the end, I just brush a lot more until I get some fading, but the finish is super durable.
Click to expand...

Thanks
 
If anyone could post their results that would be sweet. I play around with ti, but I'm not able to do much of anything atm.

Thanks to all involved for sharing this. I'll look forward to trying it soon.
 
Pittknife said:
Alright guys,

Here is how I do Black Titanium, there are a couple other makers that have done a similar process Pat Hammond, Lee Williams, Richard Rogers & Frank Fischer.
Have fun and it's a lot of work to get this right.

first prepare the surface by cleaning it thoroughly.

Then I use a propane torch (not MAP, the map gas heats up too hot and warps the Ti) to heat up the Ti section by section until red hot. This usually produces a mutlicolored effect ended with light blueish hue.

I immediately dunk it in a cool solution I made using distilled water & windex.

*Wire-brushing, I have a steel wire wheel I modified, making it less dense by clipping the wires leaving only some long strainds.

I take the part while wet and do a light brush on the wire wheel, not applying any pressure, just enough to remove the colors.

I repeat this process one more time.

By this time, the Ti will have some dark spots and some colored spots. This begins the next phase.

I heat up the colored spots to red hot, and give the rest of the scale some heat but not to red hot.

I dunk to cool off & then do the light brushing.

I repeat until all the color spots are gone and everything is consistent black.

This can take anywhere from 10 cycles to 20 cycles. If I want it lighter at the end, I just brush a lot more until I get some fading, but the finish is super durable.
Click to expand...

Thanks very much for sharing this process. Just got to prepare all the necessary equipment but doesn't seem too hard.
I plan on giving it a try on one of my chimeras. I think it will look great in contrast to some black cerakote that I have planned for one. Will post pics when finished.
OH just one question... Has anyone tried an acetylene torch for heating the Ti? I know from personal experience it is a bit slower than the MAP torch, but has anyone tried it for this process?
 
Hi guys,

I got a lot of request for this process on IG, so I sent them here. A couple makers have posted their results and everyone is real happy. Kris of KS bladeworks posted a video of him scratching black Ti versus Zirc, the zirc scratch easily and the the Black Ti wouldn't. The finish is incredibly durable.

I hope you all enjoy this and post some pics.
 
" TiN is an interstitial compound with wide composition variation and with semi-metallic properties "

The composition variation would explain the color variation. I think you are just tweeking things to get a final black TiN and have done it to get a hard durable coating. Make sure you repeat the process accurately to get consistant results .
Ti + ammonia = TiN .
 
I had a go at it thisarvo but couldn't get it past blue. I'd love to see a step by step if you ever did one.

When you say you just brush off the color. Do you mean all the blue? I'm just not seeing any black.
 
When I did it I had to do the cycle around 20 times. Heating it up until there was a powdery scale on the outside. Under that is where the goodness is. You want to take off the "scale" but not the discolouration underneath. Each time you do it it gets darker and darker.
 
Question, do you heat all of the sections to red hot one at a time until the entire scale has been heated and then quench it or do you heat a section, quench it, then heat the next section?
 
I'm guessing this wouldn't work so well with full Ti frame locks since heating it red hot might affect the detent ball...correct?
 
Pittknife said:
Kris of KS bladeworks posted a video of him scratching black Ti versus Zirc, the zirc scratch easily and the the Black Ti wouldn't.
Click to expand...
If the zirconium scratched easily, it was not properly finished. Correctly finished black zirconium is extremely durable and scratch resistant. We found the best way to remove the black oxide is a ceramic belt.

Chuck
 
There isn't that much price difference from Ti to Zirc, BUT the downsides to Zirc are huge and could cost someone there shop or even worse. So this process does seem like a good alternative to avoid those dangers and still get a dark finish on Ti.

Nick
 
Maybe, in my experience most things aren't as simple as "this is better than that".

I tried this, and while it worked, the amount of warpage on thin stock was immense by the time I did enough cycles to get black. I don't see how you'd get thin liners colored at all. Never used zirc so I couldn't say, but they're both highly flammable, zirc supposedly just much more.

ti can be had surplus for very good deals if you know where to find it, zirc supply is very limited, so cost may be a big factor.

I'm guessing, like most things, the "best option" is highly dependent on particular variables of circumstance.
 
javand said:
Maybe, in my experience most things aren't as simple as "this is better than that".

I tried this, and while it worked, the amount of warpage on thin stock was immense by the time I did enough cycles to get black. I don't see how you'd get thin liners colored at all. Never used zirc so I couldn't say, but they're both highly flammable, zirc supposedly just much more.

ti can be had surplus for very good deals if you know where to find it, zirc supply is very limited, so cost may be a big factor.

I'm guessing, like most things, the "best option" is highly dependent on particular variables of circumstance.
Click to expand...
If you want to darken thin liners just wire wheel, blast then tumble for a "darker" Ti.

As far as Zirc is concerned it's too risky if you can't grind outside. Not sure if people know this but the doj keeps records on this stuff that is how volatile this stuff is.

Nick
 
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anyone can show pics or video of the process? that'd be really helpful! =) I tried it but it didn't work... So I'm most likely doing something wrong... -__-
 
I know this is an older thread but I just want to comment on this as I feel Pittknife may have misspoke a bit, specifically by saying heat until red hot. I'm not well known (on here) but have a good bit of experience esp with modifications, patinas, anodizing etc.

I actually was having a lot of success with a mirror polished and heat anodized piece of ti (the bolster on my spyderco myrtle) heated pretty evenly to blue, until deciding this looked easy enough and dark would be cool. About 15-20 cycles later and nothing. Looks pretty awful in fact. And I feel a bit stupid as, from experience, I've learned that when heating something beyond a certain point (from purple-blue to cyan to basically white) you'll no longer get a color reaction. So after heating red hot I got no change in color except for a whitish blue, even with the wire wheel. And as Pittknife describes changes in color I'm pretty sure he did not heat until actually red hot and I took him too literally. Now the only way I'll get any color is to sand this off.

So basically I feel like for this to work youd have to keep the color around a deep blue, wire brush that off, and never heat it up beyond this point. But hey, thats just what I am seeing with my eyes
 
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