Super simple titanium anodizing help

S

Supmonkeyface

Joined
Feb 3, 2009
Messages
904
Hey all,

I've been trying for the life of me to find a good set of directions on how to anodize ti with household items. I'm talking 9 volt batteries and borax solution. All the things I read hint at ways to do it like this, but they are all using fancy voltage meters and TSP stuff.

Can I use wire as the anodes from the batteries? Or do I have to have clips (which I could probably find)? How much borax or baking soda should I use per cup/ounce of water?

I have enough Ti to use as a hook and everything. If someone could give detailed directions on this,maybe even a diagram of the setup, it would be greatly appreciated.
 
It seems I cant look at that search page because I am not a paying member. Could you link me to the one you think is best?
 
I don't know exactly how it is done but a power supply could possibly be a car battery charger. I think I have heard of computer power supplies used as well. If you have an ac\dc wall wart in the right voltage that might work.

Also TSP is a cleaning agent available at home depot for a couple bucks.

Any reason you don't want to use heat? I think it is supposed to give better color penetration.

Just some thoughts.
 
I thought about trying heat anodizing, and I have a woodstove, but I wasnt sure if it got hot enough. How much heat will I need and what can I get that heat from?
 
Supmonkeyface said:
I thought about trying heat anodizing, and I have a woodstove, but I wasnt sure if it got hot enough. How much heat will I need and what can I get that heat from?
Click to expand...

I tried three times to do it with batteries and got butkis , nada , zilch...


Heat works but depending on what source you use you have to be cautious.

For instance I heat colored my CRKT M-16ti's handles on my stove top , took maybe three minutes and got a reeaallll pretty blue color.

Google heat coloring titatium there is a color/heat chart somewhere.


Tostig
 
Here we go.
Thanks to FlaMtnBkr, I remembered the car battery charger I have in the barn. So I mixed up some borax and water and hustled outside. I set it up to manual, so the current isn't interrupted by a short protector, stuck this clip on the Ti hook I made and put my Kershaw Leek Ti's handle scale in as the negative, it worked great and I tried multiple settings and ended up getting a messy purple that sometimes changes color. Wierd. But at least I know I can do it now. Yes it is a cell phone pic in my second story window but thats where I got the best light to show the color.
jpeg_reencoded.jpg


Thanks for the help Richard and FlaMtnBkr.

I will definitely be trying again on some other things.
 
looks cool. i have a piece of ti that i might mess with just to see what colors i can come up with.
 
Yeah it was fun messing with amp and coltage settings, as well as time in the bath. I need to get some scrap Ti and maybe I'll make a color chart or something.
 
i have a bunch of diffetent voltage power supplies. maybe i need to try them out and see what colors i get from them and see if a large piece of ti gets to be the same color as a smaller piece.
 
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