Playing with titanium

Last Friday I did something very, very out of character for me: I bought something on an impulse. I never buy stuff impulsively. Never, ever. And this one time I did. I ordered some titanium. Yes, titanium. A small piece: 2.54cm x 15.24cm, and 0.4mm thick. I was really surprised when it was delivered today: talk about fast shipping!

The monster... aka small, thin titanium strip.

Anyway, since Friday I was wondering if I will be able to even cut it, as titanium is notoriously hard metal. I had also no idea what I would make out of it, until yesterday.

Quick and dirty "concept sketches". I started with the wolf one.

Naturally, when it arrived, I just had to play with it! What I can say after one day of handling titanium, is this: it's incredibly light metal. Honestly, I was surprised. Almost felt like aluminium. It's lighter than copper, but much, much stronger (obviously). The strip I ordered came annealed, so it's soft, as far as titanium goes, but it still is pretty hard. I was able to bend the strip a bit, though not permanently. It has also kind of satiny feel to it. I really can't describe it better than that.


I was a bit worried about my saw blades. I just couldn't imagine how many of them I would use up cutting through the metal (or, indeed, if it will be at all feasible with the blades I have). I'm happy to say it went better than I expected. I cut out a teardrop shape, about 2.5cm in height, and maybe 2cm in the widest place.

The titanium blank, and all the saw blades that perished cutting it out.

I used up three blades on that. The last one still had some teeth left.

Click for close up on those poor blades

Now I'm wondering if I should buy better blades just for titanium, or if there's no point in that. I wouldn't like to spend £4 on 10 blades only to find out they dull as quickly as the ones I'm using right now.

After that was cut...

The first blade was done for.

After I cut the shape out, I had a bit tidying up left do do, especially in one place. I filed the sides down a bit, and this went pretty fast. I was surprised, I thought it would be much more difficult.

By the way, the little teardrop shape can't be bent. I mean, I just used my hands, and didn't apply unreasonable force, but it's really stiff. I'm trying to imagine hardened titanium, and I can't ;P

The shop I ordered the titanium from had also niobium, and I was tempted to buy that instead, but there is one little, teeny-tiny issue that was the key factor in my decision to buy the dreaded titanium after all. Niobium has some awesome oxides, that come in an awesome array of colours. Titanium has pretty much identical colour range, with one difference: you can colour titanium with a torch, but, as far as I know, you can't do that with niobium. And I didn't feel like playing with high voltages required for anodising niobium. I mean, they start low, around 10V, but go beyond the 100V mark, and that's positively scary.

The pendant I started working on requires only one colour: deep blue. There will be another part of titanium visible, but I plan to leave that one its normal silver-gray colour. The second one will require light blue and gold.

As I was experimenting with flame colouring today, I made a mistake and overheated the piece. That changed the colour I was aiming for, the deep blue, to light blue with some whitish splotches. So I had to sand that down, and start again. This way, I got an answered to my question: will I be able to obtain two colours on one piece? The answer is yes.

Heat coloured titanium. Not perfect, but just look at those hues!

When you heat titanium, its colour changes somewhat in this sequence: first, it's getting a bit more... silver-ish. Then, a bit brownish, that it gets a really nice golden colour, and then the colour shifts towards blue spectrum: first a purple, then deep blue, then sky blue, then gets almost white. From what I read, the next colours would be greens and pinks, and finally dark grey, almost black. I didn't get to those colours though.

 What is important here, for me, is that when I was making a second attempt at deep blue, I wasn't working on an entirely clean piece. I sanded a part of it, but another part stayed sky blue. Thanks to this, I know now that for the second piece I can easily obtain sky blue and gold on one piece of metal. The coloured part didn't change one bit.

 I must say, I absolutely love the wide range of colours you can create this way! Flame colouring titanium is much easier than it is with copper: I know, I tried. Apparently, I'm hopeless with obtaining heat patina on copper

Now I just have to wait for diamond drills bits to arrive, because you can't solder titanium, so I will have to rivet it and the copper together. I did make first opening in the copper part of the pendant today, just to see how the two look together.

First opening made.

It looks better than in this picture. I didn't cut all of them, as it was pretty late already, and I though my neighbours wouldn't be very happy if they had to listen to drilling for much longer ;)

After one day experience with titanium, I can say that it's definitely an interesting material to work with, and its colourful oxides provide a whole range of possibilities. I can't way to finish this piece, and to see how it will turn out!

I'm also wondering if my engraving bits would survive engraving titanium... they do have diamond tips, and I have two sets of them, but still. I wonder how long they would last...

Till the next time!
Kasia