Surface hardening for Titanium and Aluminum.

[Carlos]

With the ATR and no doubt eventually other titanium-handled knives down the road, I thought that I would mention a couple of ways to protect this soft metal from cosmetic damage.



Ventura, a watch company in Switzerland, uses Nitrogen surface hardening on its titanium-cased watches, bringing the surface hardness to 1300 HV (Vicker's scale). I know of a few people with these watches and all have yet to report a single scratch.



But even better (possibly) is the Keronite surface hardening method for Ti, Al, and Mg. "KERONITE is a process of refractory ceramic oxide layers formation by oxidation of substrate material caused by high-current electro-chemical reactions in electrolyte." Gobbeldygook aside, it results in a ceramic layer on the metal with a hardness of 1300 to 2000 HV. As a final step, it may give Almite, Tufram, etc. a run for their money.



Here is their webaddress so you can look them up yourself:



http://www.isle-coat.com/



http://www.microncoatings.it/keronite.html





BTW, the Keronite coating also works with MMC!

[sal]

Thanx again Carlos. The Tekno place is sure to become my favorite "job" to moderate.

sal

[Carlos]

Hi Sal,

It's nice to have someone around who not only likes this high-tech materials stuff as much as I do, but who may actually use it as well. <img src="smile.gif" width=15 height=15 align=middle>

Edited by - Carlos on 11/20/00 7:35:55 PM

[AncientSUL]

Carlos Thanks for digging this stuff for us. No u r not the only one. I love this stuff. Too bad I spend all day in a Kitchen making pastries. Oh well back to work.

Liong