All,
I am trying to understand the workings of metal burnishing fluids, like the ones that AK Interactive is offering. Is this a "staining" or rather an "oxidation" process? I am curious about this, because I wonder if this can be used to "blacken" rails without effecting the conductivity.
Any advise is appreciated
Christian
Hello Christian, I go to burnished nickel silver rails and clean the track with alcohol.
Christian
Quote from: BKLN on September 03, 2013, 06:53:56 PM
I am trying to understand the workings of metal burnishing fluids, like the ones that AK Interactive is offering. Is this a "staining" or rather an "oxidation" process? I am curious about this, because I wonder if this can be used to "blacken" rails without effecting the conductivity.
Any advise is appreciated
... I'm not quite sure how these fluids work, but I can assure you that,
in case they work like common blackening/burnishing fluids the conductivity is definitely not affected ...
There's a Link from the AK interactive blog (http://ak-interactive.blogspot.de/2012/02/note-to-all-metal-burnishing-users.html) to some tutorial of UvDR (http://www.uschivdr.com/tutorials/) (scroll down and/or search for
UvDR-1 Burnishing Agent) ... I suspect, they only work "burnishing" white metal, tracks may look familiar but consist of different material ...
HTH (did not have the time watching/listening to the tutorial in all)
Gerald
I was looking at those UvDR / AK posts, too. But in a way they confused me even more. I guess I'll give it a try!
I will keep you guys posted on the results.
A quick update on my successful (!) experiments:
I ordered the "AK-Interactive Metal Burnishing" fluid, developed by Uschi VanDerRosten.
I did a very quick test with 3 pieces of track. I cleaned the track sections with soapy water. I couldn't find an appropriate plastic bowl, so I used a heavy duty ziplock bag as a substitute, which worked just fine for an initial test. I used about a 1/4 of the bottle, roughly diluted with a similar amount of water. The track has to sit completely in the solution. I used a old toothbrush to rub in the solution, making sure that all part of the track really get exposed.
The oxidation process took at least 30min, but then you could see a really nice shift towards a deep black-brownish coloration of the track. The plastic ties were not effected. After about 45min, I took the tracks out, rinsed them of with water and let them air-dry on paper towels.
The crucial test came later. I checked if the conductivity was effected, but it seemed that the metal burnishing solution had no impact on that at all, so I am very pleased with the results. So far, so good!
I planning to stain all the tracks of my current projects. I will keep you posted.
Christian
Christian -
Is the rail brass, aluminum, steel, or something else?
Bill Martinsen
Bill,
I assume it's standard nickel-silver rail.
Is there a difference in this material from the "Blacken-It" by A-West?
No idea, but I guess it has to be the same chemical.
Once the track has been treated does it come back off? (I find gun blue does perhaps I'm using the wrong sort?)
Jim