metal work

[zedicus]

I started soaking the polished penny over the weekend. This was just a very first step in a process but here is how it went. And i did the soak with lenses in and everything too see if the chemical bath would mess with the lenses. Really it did cause some delamination, but plain water could have done that too for the length of soak time.

More to come.

 

[Chris A Hardaway]

Cool man. What did you soak them for? Just to break the gunk off. I have a set of black iridium penny lenses I'm looking to sell on the cheap if we interested. Good luck w the refinish! I also love to chop em lenses for X-Metals.

 

[ShortChangeHero]

I’m confused, what was the purpose of the soaking.

 

[Orion]

just curious why you wouldn't remove the lenses before you soaked them or was that part of your plan where you didn't care if the lenses were damaged

 

[zedicus]

TI darkening is often a chemical dip.
i soaked with the lenses to see if it would cause damage to the lenses. (from a can it be done at home point of view, how easy is it to do)

next step will be go ahead and remove lenses, wire wheel one side of the frame, and re-dip the entire frame for a comparison and to hopefully have a comparative x-metal color soon.

unrelated to this but i am building a vacuum chamber and resin casting replacement tail light lenses for an Aprilia Falco. so i am kind of spottily splitting my time.

once i have a similar x-metal color and process, i will come up with a repair for scratched x-metal coloring.

 

[PMF]

Looks nice. You soaked it in what kind of chemicals more specifically? I may try it on mine.

 

[zwc0442]

TI darkening is often a chemical dip.
i soaked with the lenses to see if it would cause damage to the lenses. (from a can it be done at home point of view, how easy is it to do)

next step will be go ahead and remove lenses, wire wheel one side of the frame, and re-dip the entire frame for a comparison and to hopefully have a comparative x-metal color soon.

unrelated to this but i am building a vacuum chamber and resin casting replacement tail light lenses for an Aprilia Falco. so i am kind of spottily splitting my time.

once i have a similar x-metal color and process, i will come up with a repair for scratched x-metal coloring.

X metal finish is a blasted finish. Wire wheel won't give you that look.

 

[zedicus]

Plasma is a blasted finish, and most people do not have a sand blaster so i am going to show how to make a similar finish with a stainless wire brush.
X-metal is an oxidized finish probably done with an accelerate chem dip.

i would guess that all x-metals start life as raw cast and then go to a plasma state, then have more finishing done to them if they are polished, X-metal, or carbon. the carbon seems to be a real ceramic coating (not similar to the cera-coat some people are using, but more like ceramic header coating on engine parts)

 

[zwc0442]

The last gen of plasma and maybe 4th was some type of glass bead/ceramic bead blasted finish but all previous generations had coatings on them from what I've figured out when refinishing and restoring frames. 1st gen being the thickest of all the generations.

 

[THE X-MAN]

Carbon is an anodized finish. Whether or not the later generations of plasma are Sandblasted is debatable.....