Black Anodize

[Tom Harrell]

Greetings,

I've read articles about painting chrome with enamel. I've seen pictures of cameras that have been repainted or else were chrome and changed to black paint. That got me to wondering about having a chrome camera anodized in lieu of painting one. I thought I would ask and see if any of you readers have had this done. Would this decrease the value of the camera? I am going to look for a camera that needs rebuilding and have it anodized to see how it turns out.

Tom

 

[dmr]

I'm not a metallurgist by any means, but I'm under the impression that only certain metals, such as aluminum, can be anodized.

 

[Ronald M]

You can do black chrome if you can figure out how.

To do black paint, the chrome needs to be taken off in a reverse plating operation with any underlying metals to get to brass. With the proper prep, brass can be laquered or enameled.

I would just use black tape, scotch waterproof. Leaves no residue.

 

[JoshRoot]

I'm no expert, since powdercoating is more what I do. But I think the anodizing anything other than aluminium will be a huge PITA.

Now, you might be able to get a black chrome look by plating over the existing plating. But that may not be what you want. And again, I'm not an expert in plating.

 

[dmr]

To do black paint, the chrome needs to be taken off in a reverse plating operation with any underlying metals to get to brass. With the proper prep, brass can be laquered or enameled.

Possible stupid question here? Why can't you just paint over the chrome? I think we had this thread before, but I don't remember any conclusions.

 

[x-ray]

I've thought about taking the metal parts from an old M2 or 3 and sending them to one of the companies that do parkerizing or plating on guns. A military green parkerized M3 would be very cool. I think almost anything that will take a copper plate will parkerize well. It's extremely durable and flat in tome. A variety of colors and tone can be applied. A company that I used to use was chekmate. I havent had anything done in about ten years so I don't know if they are in bisuness anymore. They also did black chrome and regular chome in high polish, bead blasted satin and brush. I think you can also get nickel aswell.

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/photopost/showgallery.php?cat=5045

 

[x-ray]

I took a look to see if checkmate was stil around and found this. Ceramic coating of metal parts in various colors.

No connection - google gun finishes

http://www.theshootersroost.com/ceramic.html


www.mrarms.com

very cool finishes - how about a camo M3?

www.gunfancy.com

engrave your M3!

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/pho...ry.php?cat=5045

 

[Rob Holland]

anodizing aluminum is the process of creating an oxide build up on the aluminum. It's been a long time since material sciience classes, so I forget the exact chemical reaction. Bottom line is it is a reaction with the aluminum. There are some aluminum treatment preprep that can be applied, but as someone else said, it's a PITA.

The black chrome is pretty easy and looks nice. The prep work to polish the brass is the hard part. Typically requires a copper plating, then sand and polish. Then nickel plating and polish. Then the final black chrome plating.

You can paint directly over chrome, but the paint won't stick well. Even with a good sanding to give it some tooth, it still tends to flake off. Best bet is to electropolish (reverse plate) to get rid of the chrome, then sand through the nickel, clean with alcohol and then paint. Another option is sandblasting. Much faster, but I don't have that equipment.

Rob

 

[sychan]

I had the top and bottom plate from an M2 sent out to be given a "GunKote" type finish, and both parts ended up being warped by the process. This probably due to the baking that is used to cure these epoxy/moly type coatings. The top plate was usable, but the bottom plate was too warped.

There was also pitting because their method of stripping the chrome was applied too long. I have performed nickel plating myself in the past (I refinished a Browning HP), and in retrospect I should have done my own plating instead of sending it out.

 

[aizan]

anybody have experience with this nickel stripper?

http://www.finishing.com/stripper/index.shtml

i keep thinking about refinishing classic cameras 🙄

the hexar rf has an epoxy coating on titanium covers. i really like it, too bad you can't do it on brass. maybe zinc could tolerate the process...hmm...

 

[Tom Harrell]

I'm not a metallugrists either and I forgot that only aluminum is anodized. Parkerizing sounds interesting.