N Jenner
Oakley Expert
- 262
- 553
Had an almost destroyed non serial penny sitting in a bag of parts for quite a while so I thought I would get around to refinish them finally. Since they were a non serial I thought I would go a different route than the standard finish since I work with titanium quite a bit.
Should have taken pictures from the start but only have the end result below. Started off by sanding out all the dings and nicks in the frames since they looked like they might have been left on someones roof and came off on a gravel road at speed, next I put them through a stone washing process with 1/2” ceramic media. Final part of the finish was done with a full alcohol cleaning then a 3 minute soak in hydrofluoric acid followed immediately by a rinse in some acid neutralizer. The finish looks like it would be rough to the touch but is around the same as the gen 1 plasma in terms of how smooth the finish is. This is actually exposing and highlighting the crystal grain structure of the titanium so its definitely something different. Hopefully I’ll get around to final assembly in the next few days.
Just for reference if anyone wants to use hydrofluoric acid make sure you fill the screw threads in the frames with melted wax, depending on the concentration of the acid it will damage the threads. Also hydrofluoric acid is extremely nasty stuff so use a full respirator, goggles and rubber gloves.
Should have taken pictures from the start but only have the end result below. Started off by sanding out all the dings and nicks in the frames since they looked like they might have been left on someones roof and came off on a gravel road at speed, next I put them through a stone washing process with 1/2” ceramic media. Final part of the finish was done with a full alcohol cleaning then a 3 minute soak in hydrofluoric acid followed immediately by a rinse in some acid neutralizer. The finish looks like it would be rough to the touch but is around the same as the gen 1 plasma in terms of how smooth the finish is. This is actually exposing and highlighting the crystal grain structure of the titanium so its definitely something different. Hopefully I’ll get around to final assembly in the next few days.
Just for reference if anyone wants to use hydrofluoric acid make sure you fill the screw threads in the frames with melted wax, depending on the concentration of the acid it will damage the threads. Also hydrofluoric acid is extremely nasty stuff so use a full respirator, goggles and rubber gloves.
