Heat Anodizing A Titanium Omas Nib

[mhphoto]

I'm a big fan of the rainbow of colors you can get from monkeying with titanium oxides, but until tonight I had never thought about titanium nibs being a target for my blow torch. I bought a titanium OMAS nib off eBay and as I was messing with it the idea clicked.

 

Here's a titanium silverware set I anodized a while back.

 

 

Unfortunately, unlike the silverware, the titanium nib has the matte finish that is (for whatever ungodly reason) very popular. So I knew the finished product wouldn't be nearly as bright and cheery, but I pressed on.

 

I tested the tail end of the nib first.

 

 

After that turned out fine, I did the entire thing.

 

 

 

Looks beautiful, but do you wanna know the major downside? Not that it was flexy before, but if flexed now it tends to stay flexed. So I have to use it with light pressure. But since I never wanted to use it as any degree of flexible nib, that's fine with me.

 

The nib unit wouldn't fit in any of the handful of pens I tried, so I kept the nib out and stuck it in a pen I thought it would look nice in, and one that would let me alter the flow: an ebonite Noodler's Konrad. Luckily I didn't have to heat set the feed, it worked great right away.

 

 

So there it is, a beautiful nib in a beautiful pen.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Well to be blunt, you now have a pretty, but useless nib.

I'm sure the company would have loved to sell prettier nibs...had it been possible.

[gregamckinney]

Cool experiment.

greg

[mhphoto]

Well to be blunt, you now have a pretty, but useless nib.

I'm sure the company would have loved to sell prettier nibs...had it been possible.

 

 

It's actually regained a surprising amount of springiness just sitting there over night. But even if it hadn't, it's far from useless.

[zaddick]

That is neat to see. Thank you for sharing your talents.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Titanium is a very odd metal. Glad it came back.

[SirVival]

Pendelton Brown offers something similar on steel nibs. Saw his mod in a TWSBI Micarta thread somewhere on here.

[Piper 987]

Titanium is a very odd metal. Glad it came back.

I'm not sure what is odd about titanium. As a metal, it has some differences compared to the various steels (iron alloys) and gold alloys more commonly used to make fountain pen nibs which is only to be expected.

 

I'm a big fan of the rainbow of colors you can get from monkeying with titanium oxides, but until tonight I had never thought about titanium nibs being a target for my blow torch. I bought a titanium OMAS nib off eBay and as I was messing with it the idea clicked.

 

Unfortunately, unlike the silverware, the titanium nib has the matte finish that is (for whatever ungodly reason) very popular. So I knew the finished product wouldn't be nearly as bright and cheery, but I pressed on.

 

Looks beautiful, but do you wanna know the major downside? Not that it was flexy before, but if flexed now it tends to stay flexed. So I have to use it with light pressure. But since I never wanted to use it as any degree of flexible nib, that's fine with me.

 

The nib unit wouldn't fit in any of the handful of pens I tried, so I kept the nib out and stuck it in a pen I thought it would look nice in, and one that would let me alter the flow: an ebonite Noodler's Konrad. Luckily I didn't have to heat set the feed, it worked great right away.

 

So there it is, a beautiful nib in a beautiful pen.

Pure titanium is a beautiful, lustrous metallic white. I have no idea what Omas ordered up as a titanium alloy but your nib certainly didn't start out as pure titanium.

 

Pure titanium is a strong metal and is very ductile. (It deforms well under both tensile and compressive forces.) That means in the form of a fountain pen nib, it will spring easily and stay sprung. Of course, 'easy' in this case is a relative word. Titanium has a very high strength to weight ratio. That means it will lack flex. But press on a titanium nib hard enough and it will spring, but not spring back.

 

That said, application of heat above 430 C (barely warmed up for a propane or butane blow torch) weakens titanium. What happens to the stuff (as an alloy) after it cools down again is beyond me.

 

According to Richard Binder (no slouch when it comes to fountain pens), for fountain pen nibs titanium is at the bottom of the list of materials, where it belongs. To each his own! Of course, oxidizing titanium to titanium dioxide by heat does produce those glorious colors seen in your first image of what I take to be back-packing dinnerware. The oxidized Omas nib in your Konrad looks pretty cool as well. And as the people at Noddler's say, fool around with these things. That's half the fun!

[masterguns]

I applaud your adventurous spirit. No joke.

So many people nearly (bleep) their pants when their tines get misaligned. "Off to a nibmeister!" shouts the gallery.

I appreciate those who are willing to take a risk and learn something.

Bravo.