The Armour Archive

Greetings, anyone ever have any luck darkening aluminum? Does aluminum take blueing as steel does? Wondering about plate, not maille. Thanks.

Broðir

The only coloring I have seen for aluminum is alodine, which turns it a dull yellow-brown color (a gold color if you will). It's an anti-corosion coating we use on aircraft parts at my place of work. You first dip the aluminum in acid, wash it off, and then let it sit in a tank of alodine for a few minutes. The longer it's in the alodine, the darker the color.

Other than that, you can paint it.

Kyle.

This isn't darkening, it is rather in the opposite direction, I boiled my aluminum maille. I turned it white, a very dull almost milk colored white.

Or if you want to go the whole wild boar. Strip your armour down to the individual plates and take it to be anodized. The dye is embedded into the oxide layer of the metal and is quite tough and hard wearing. (though it will crack if the metal is bent about a lot)

Anodized aluminium is quite common and most cities have a couple of places which can do it. It can also be done at home but the equipment is specailised.

The basics are skimmed over in the book
" The Complete Metalsmith " by Tim McCreight

Juz

If you have any doubts (and I stress ANY!) about the capabilities of anodizing... pick up any paintball magazine and look at some of the custom colored barrels! They are at a point now that they can recreate just about any image with anodizing.

Lord Douglas the Indecisive
paintballer since 1988

A friend of mine has a connection to an anodizing plant, so we sent them some samples of 5356 maille we've been working on. The stuff came back a cool gold, but softer than what we sent them. Anodizing is a hot process, and any heat treatment that might be on your aluminum will be lost (although it could be redone). This means that your T6 (or T anything) will come back softer, unless you retreat it (heat treating aluminum is a different animal from steel - sometimes it just involves a specific temperature and a quench, sometimes heating in a bath of something, it depends...). Anodizing can produce some really nifty colors, though (black, blue, gold, purple, brown all being common) and is relatively widely available.

Good luck,
Ulsted

I believe gun bluing comes out dark grey on aluminum, but I'll have to look at a book when I get home to be sure.

Ragnar