Making Titanium scratch resistant ?

B

Bart student

Joined
Nov 17, 1999
Messages
676
hello folks,


Soon I'll be getting a sebebza (Yipee!) but after three weeks I'll be looking for ways to enhance it :D

First thing that'll come to mind is how to make the handle more scratch resistant. I coloured my LCC bolsters by getting them red-hot in my forge and aircool, then they kinda get a battle-ship gray look with a shade of light blue. I know this is just a layer of Ti-Oxide, but it sure is scratch resistant, almost coated. a coin of hard copper won't even scratch it, nor does brass or soft steel.

Now I could do that to a sebenza, one problem.. it needs to be tough and flexible afterwards, or else the framelock won't work.

Now I dunno what heating it red-hot does to Ti, and more specific the 6AL4V frame, but it also will get hot inside, so I'm going way deeper then just the surface.

Sooo any adive would be welcome, I know there are a lot of folks here who know much more about working Ti then I do. I'm interested in if and when Ti loses it's flexible properties if heated to high temps.

If this is no solution, I'll wire finish the Ti frame, the surface working (constant impacting of steel wires at high speed) might even workharden the surface without heating the ti (too) much.


Thanks in advance for the help,

Greetz and take are all,

Bart.
 
LizardKing got that right. Boron Carbide would be best. Heating the frame like that might not affect the lock but it will definitely ruin the detent ball then you would have to get a new one put in.
 
OK folks, thanks for the answers,


I knew this would come up, but it is not what I'm looking for. Everytime I send something over the ocean it comes back with a HUGE bills attached. If a sebbie is sent to me, I'm looking at a 150$ bill, and that is ONLY the bill. So if I sent it to bodycote, they'll charge me their fee, plus 150 $ bill plus shipping back. That is gonna be expensive now isn't it?

Soo, I'm looking for a home made method of making Ti more scratch resistant. Maybe anodizing?

greetz and take care all, Bart.
 
You can try a coarse scotchbrite wheel or belt to put a scratched or brushed finish on it. Then, if you have access to a DC power supply you can easily anodize it. I like the brushed finish because it tends to give better wear to the ano surface and the colors last longer. The wire wheel will scumble the surface and result in an orangepeel type of look which is also nice.
 
Hey, Bart! I smoothed the surfaces of mine using grey scotch belt. Works fine. Really hard to scratch now. You can have a look at it at Tim's hammer-in in June.

Achim
 
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