Let's see some of your heat colored mods. Before and after pics preferred. I got bored after work and colored my Nemesis tonight.
Before:
After:
Before:
After:
Heat colored mods
- Thread starter cstone1991
- Start date
- th_trl_thread_readers 0
- Status
Looks better however, if you really want to get those nice violets and blues to pop try heating from a distance slowly, evenly, and consistently. When a decent area is almost to desired color stop, cool, and repeat. If heated to quickly the residual heat will continue to change the color, quench in water if needed. Steel goes from silver to straw yellow to violet to blue then start going to light blue and back to almost silver.
Thanks for the tip. I did this one pretty quickly and I wanted the graduation that I achieved, but had hoped for darker coloring. I have some SMPL clones and a few RDAs ordered to get some more practice in. I'll post some pics of those after I'm done.
I tried this on my SS Panzer with no success. I heated the bejesuz out of it and there was no colour change what so ever. It was so hot I couldn't touch it for 15 minutes.
It takes patience. If you try to heat it too fast, the results will look sloppy. There's a certain degree of an artistic eye that's required as well. It isn't the hardest project I've ever taken on by a long shot, but it is quite a bit harder than it looks. Thanks for the compliments.
Amazing turn out on these! Hope my advice helped out. Wasn't sure if you had done it before so I figured i'd throw in a couple pointers.
Next for added customization you should attempt "brazing". For best results you would need a way to engrave designs with some precision. A dremel would work but not as easy to make clean lines as it would seem. But that is most likely what you'd have to use unless you had access to a CNC lathe with live tooling or a CNC mill with a rotating table mount axis, which are not typical at home hobbyist tools.
You then heat the steel to the point of being hot enough to melt brass filler metal, usually fairly thin brass wire or rods are used, right into the engravings by touching them to the steel as you heat the steel and brass sort of simultaneously with your torch. They both must be at a temp that will allow bonding of the two metals. The process is similar to soldering. After filling all engravings it will look messy with over filled brass on steel. You then need to lightly file the brass in a curving motion around the circumference down to the steel level which is easy because brass is softer than steel. Use needle files they will work perfectly. After this, sand by hand using course down to fine grit, make sure to sand around the mod by wrapping the paper on the mod and turn (I'd put the mod end to end in a vice and do something similar to how a shoe polisher wraps a cloth around a shoe), not top to bottom, this will make polishing or buffing so much easier and will look way better. After everything is sanded smooth the steel should look clean and silver again with brass (or copper would look great as well) inlays, you then heat color as you did before, this should leave the brass or copper unaffected. I'm pretty sure buffing can be done either before or after coloring, try both methods to see what works best.
Practice this on plates of steel before attempting on your mods as its not something that can be fixed afterward.
It's a lot of information and seems like a ton of work but if you're a hobbyist and want a challenge the custom results will be priceless.
The appearance of brass engravings in violet and blue stainless after sanding and polishing is astounding.
Next for added customization you should attempt "brazing". For best results you would need a way to engrave designs with some precision. A dremel would work but not as easy to make clean lines as it would seem. But that is most likely what you'd have to use unless you had access to a CNC lathe with live tooling or a CNC mill with a rotating table mount axis, which are not typical at home hobbyist tools.
You then heat the steel to the point of being hot enough to melt brass filler metal, usually fairly thin brass wire or rods are used, right into the engravings by touching them to the steel as you heat the steel and brass sort of simultaneously with your torch. They both must be at a temp that will allow bonding of the two metals. The process is similar to soldering. After filling all engravings it will look messy with over filled brass on steel. You then need to lightly file the brass in a curving motion around the circumference down to the steel level which is easy because brass is softer than steel. Use needle files they will work perfectly. After this, sand by hand using course down to fine grit, make sure to sand around the mod by wrapping the paper on the mod and turn (I'd put the mod end to end in a vice and do something similar to how a shoe polisher wraps a cloth around a shoe), not top to bottom, this will make polishing or buffing so much easier and will look way better. After everything is sanded smooth the steel should look clean and silver again with brass (or copper would look great as well) inlays, you then heat color as you did before, this should leave the brass or copper unaffected. I'm pretty sure buffing can be done either before or after coloring, try both methods to see what works best.
Practice this on plates of steel before attempting on your mods as its not something that can be fixed afterward.
It's a lot of information and seems like a ton of work but if you're a hobbyist and want a challenge the custom results will be priceless.
The appearance of brass engravings in violet and blue stainless after sanding and polishing is astounding.
Last edited:
Thanks C3RB3RU5! Your advice definitely helped. On Nemesis I believe that I tried to heat the mod too much and too quickly.
I'm very happy with the way all of the SMPLs have turned out, and apparently I'm not the only one that likes them because the one with the Derringer and the one with the vertical gradient above both sold already (the one with the Rogue and Cloud Champ in the pics is mine) and a local shop decided to start selling my mods in their store.
I did another 3 on Sunday and I think they are the nicest yet. These are the ones that the local shop is selling:
Brazing sounds like it would look amazing if done correctly! I'm going to have to do some reading on the subject and I may try my hand at that as well. I'm currently using a simple handheld propane torch (the type you might use for soldering copper pipes). From some very quick reading, it sounds like I may need to upgrade to a Mapp setup to achieve the temperatures necessary for brazing or do you think that propane would work at least well enough to try it out with small pieces? I'm interested, but don't really want to invest a significant amount of money right away if I can help it.
I'm very happy with the way all of the SMPLs have turned out, and apparently I'm not the only one that likes them because the one with the Derringer and the one with the vertical gradient above both sold already (the one with the Rogue and Cloud Champ in the pics is mine) and a local shop decided to start selling my mods in their store.
I did another 3 on Sunday and I think they are the nicest yet. These are the ones that the local shop is selling:
Brazing sounds like it would look amazing if done correctly! I'm going to have to do some reading on the subject and I may try my hand at that as well. I'm currently using a simple handheld propane torch (the type you might use for soldering copper pipes). From some very quick reading, it sounds like I may need to upgrade to a Mapp setup to achieve the temperatures necessary for brazing or do you think that propane would work at least well enough to try it out with small pieces? I'm interested, but don't really want to invest a significant amount of money right away if I can help it.
I really like how the middle one in the first picture turned out the colors are fantastic!
I believe for small pieces like mods brazing brass or copper filler metal to stainless with propane torch should be sufficient. It's been a long time since I've done this, I did brazing like I described in a high school art metals class and we only used propane hand torches. I will say again I would experiment on metal plates similar in thickness to the mods you'll be working on to see if things will work and for profecting your methods.
Wish I still had the piece I made as an example of how it can look. I tried finding a photo of something that looked like what I'm talking about but all I find is industrial type uses and they don't look very artistic.
I believe for small pieces like mods brazing brass or copper filler metal to stainless with propane torch should be sufficient. It's been a long time since I've done this, I did brazing like I described in a high school art metals class and we only used propane hand torches. I will say again I would experiment on metal plates similar in thickness to the mods you'll be working on to see if things will work and for profecting your methods.
Wish I still had the piece I made as an example of how it can look. I tried finding a photo of something that looked like what I'm talking about but all I find is industrial type uses and they don't look very artistic.
I've got a few ideas to get some copper into these, I talked to a co-worker who has done some brazing and he gave me some tips and ideas. I also have an idea regarding electroplating which I'll share after I get a chance to try it out. Just gotta get ahold of a couple SS scraps now so I'm not potentially ruining a good mod if it doesn't work out.
Here's one I did awhile back. Torched the bottom blue, sanded it down and faded the top from blue to straw.
Wow these are incredible guys! Do you use a welding torch? or just butane? Iv'e just started selling my patina mods, but I really like this method as well. Honestly anything that i can customize to make it unique ya know?
- Status
Similar threads
- Locked
