Patina for titanium

Z

Zsartell

Joined
Oct 4, 2005
Messages
10
Hello all,

Can anyone tell me how to get a Black patina onto titanium. I have had a request from my fiance for a black ring and though I might give titanium a try.

Thanks
Zach
Iron Oak Forge
 
You can color zirconium black. It is similar to titanium in properties. The Edward Mirrell rings are an alloy of mostly zirconium with some titanium thrown in. They call it black titanium because people know titanium and aren't as familiar with zirconium. The ring in my avatar is zirconium that has been blackened then later lasered, etched, and anodized.
 
Bruce,

Thanks for the info. Perhaps I'll try zirconium instead. By the way, I like your work. Unfortunatly I don't have CNC equipment like you do, but I am hoping my little mini lathe will be up to the task. I was hoping to forge the ring to shape first and then cut the rest on my lathe. Have you ever forged Titanium or zirconium? I know you can forge titanium although I don;t know how practical it would be, but I don;t know anything about zirconium.

Thanks
Zach
Iron Oak Forge
 
Hi Zach, I haven't tried forging either material. They both oxidize when exposed to heat, so any forging would have to be done in an argon shield. For a ring, you normally just start from solid bar.

Something to be aware of is that when turning zirconium, it burns even easier than titanium. You need to keep it cool and keep your lathe area clear of anything that will burn. It will be bright like fireworks, so just be ready for that. Stand to the side and wear a face shield. It quickly burns itself out when there's just a small pile of stringy chips, but it can easily light other stuff like wood shavings or oil. I turn mine in the CNC, so it's like a dishwasher in there and it stays cool that way. The material is out there in bar form, but it does get pretty expensive. I think it's something like a few hundred dollars for a foot long piece. The guys that make the black titanium rings that you referenced have a patent on that alloy, so it's not available for general use.
 
I found a supplier of 1" round bar that will sell me a small 12" section of 702 for a decent price. The ring will be just under one inch, so that should be fine. I was hoping to be able to cut a piece off and upset it to make a larger sized ring for myself and then machine it from there. That's what I've always done with my damascus billets. Like you said, the zirconium will oxidize when heated in an oxygen rich atmosphere. That's what gives it that hard black surface layer. Perhaps this will not be a problem, but I'll find out soon enough. Thanks for the warning about it being flammable. I'll probably end up rigging some sort of coolant sprayer or something to help keep the heat down and to keep it from bursting into flames. Good time to make sure that fire extinguisher works.

Do you know what temperature creates that hard black surface oxide? I'm just wondering if I'll be able to heat color it after I set the stone.

I hope my fiance realizes what a process this has been..... and she had better love this thing! LOL

Thanks for all your help Bruce, most people just tell me I'm nuts for even trying....
 
To get to black, you need to get the ring to glow bright red. I don't have the means to know the temperature, but it needs to be plenty hot. You'll go through all the anodized colors; bronze, blue purple, blue, yellow, purple, and teal before it gets to black. There's no going back down to a lower color unless you machine through the black or abrade it away. It's a pretty hard surface at mohs 8.4, where diamond is 10 and titanium is 6.5. Only the thinner chips will burn, not the solid metal, so it's like titanium in that regard.

You said you would be setting a stone. Do you have some experience with that? What kind of setting are you looking to do? The metal is a lot stiffer than gold or platinum, so it's pretty tough to set stones in the traditional way. Once the ring is black, there can't be any more sanding or working it, so that sets up challenges there too.

The 1" bar should handle a round ring up to around a size 11. If you have extra stock when you're done and want to get rid of it, I'd look into buying it. I go through a lot of that stuff!
 
Bruce,

I figured it needed to be pretty hot. It'd be interesting to experiment with the other colors as well. I heat color some of my steel forged items for different effects and my clients love it.

I have absolutely no experience setting a stone. But, I'm fairly handy and should be able to figure it out with a bit of practice. I had first wanted to just use a setting burr to set it right into the metal, but since this stuff is going to be extremely hard I figure I'm going to have to use a bezel. I should be able to solder the bezel in after the ring is oxidized and just be careful to not get solder everywhere. I figure I'll use a bottomless bezel out of a piece of tubing or purchase a commercially made one. That way I can just drop a tiny amount of solder in the bottom and it should stay down there and stick well.

I talked to a gent yesterday that has forged this stuff in an open atmosphere and he said I shouldn't have a problem forging it. I'm going to try and forge the 1" stock to about 1-1/4" for a ring for myself. This will be my test piece so I get the hang of it first. As far as getting rid of the extra stock, I'll let you know what I have left over (if any depending on screw-ups ;-)

Thanks again Bruce

Zach
 
By the way most fire extinguishers will not work on metal fires. Way to hot and different type of fire. You need a class D extinguisher for metal fires. Many types of metal dust will burn. The most notorious of course is magnesium. but, aluminum, titanium, plutonium and uranium ( do you do these LOL.)etc will all burn extremely hot. Many use powdered aluminum and iron as thermite for an extreme heat source, kind of hard to light but, once it goes it is almost impossible to stop. I watched a video of a aluminum/iron fire that was set up to burn thru a plate and then drop into a bucket of liquid nitrogen and the liquid nitrogen did not put it out. . Be careful with fine metal chips and dust.
 
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ib2v4u,

Good reminder on the extinguisher. A standard one will only be good for what the flaming chips catch in fire. :) I'll definitely have to clean the area of chips frequently to minimize any major problems and the use of a coolant will help also. That reminds me, I've got to get some new carbide inserts as the HSS probably won't hold up all that well.

We used to burn chucks of magnesium from crank cases off of weed whacker engines. That stuff is impossible to put out. I don't think I'll be doing to much machining on uranium any time soon either...... :D
 
Another thing to note; you can't solder to titanium or zirconium. The oxide layer keeps anything from sticking. This is why solder picks are made from titanium. It can be laser welded under argon though. My latest toy is one of those. It does some cool stuff.
 
Bummer, that really puts a damper on that. Would it work if I broke through the hard oxide layer (created when heated to red hot), or are you talking about the natural oxide layer that it just always has kinda like stainless? Perhaps I'll be looking into an extremely strong epoxy of some sort, although that's kinda lame... Another option would be to tension set the bezel somehow. Perhaps I could grind the bezel hole more "open" on the inside and after I insert the bezel, expand it somehow in the hole. That might work. I'm going over to a jewelry supply house just down the road to look at my tooling options. I'm hoping they might have some bezels for me to check out too.
 
The oxide layer forms within milliseconds, so there is no soldering to the stuff. It's the same as aluminum in that way. Here's the type of settings I do with it:

These are called tension settings. They are very touchy to get right, and I have years of learning curve of dialing them in. I'd rather not get too detailed on how to do those, but the wrong pressure can either lose or crush a stone.

You could do a blind setting and hammer the material over the stone girdle and blacken it afterward if the stone can stand the heat of the torch, which risks breaking it. Just hammering the tough metal over the girdle of a stone is a difficult thing to do without crushing the stone. That is something that might take lots of practice on cheaper stones like CZ's.
 

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Bruce,

Your tension settings are cool, but that's not what she's looking for and like you said it takes a great deal of practice to get them right.

I had planned on using a CZ stone so no worries if it breaks anyway. I planned on ordering a few for spare. With the blind setting I'm assuming you mean drill a hole with a burr tool (or just a drill bit) and peen the material around the stone to keep it in place. This would be my ultimate choice to set the stone, but I didn't think the stone would take the heat alright. Perhaps I can sacrifice one and see how it goes. I also thought it might be hard to peen zirconium in any state, but maybe it wouldn't be too difficult. I also thought a silver bezel would help reflect the clear stone better than having a black background without the bezel.

Another way I thought of is to solder the bezel to a smaller solid rod and drill a hole all the way through the ring. The bezel would go so far in and the rod would stick out the back. Then I could just peen the rod into the hole and sand it flush. So many options.... So now all I have to do is wait for payday so I can order all of this stuff for experimentation ;-)
 
The silver bezel that's on the rod and peened on the backside could work. I think CZ's just might stand the heat of blackening the metal, so that would be a good thing to try also. The metal before blackening is a little softer than titanium, so it could probably work OK like that. You then get the chance to sand or smooth up the metal before it all gets black. Trying to set the stone after blackening would be tough in that you would probably poke through the black and ruin the look.
 
Bruce,

Am I going to have to build some sort of furnace (god I hope not) to get the zirconium to turn black or will a torch of coal forge suffice? Hopefully next week I'll have my bar and can start experimenting.

Thanks
Zach
 
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