anodizing dyes

I finished my anodizing sample pieces last night and I took a photo of all the colors I have. All of these dyes are from www.caswellplating.com and these are the names they use for the colors.

Most of the colors are accurate on my calibrated monitor, but a few of them don't look so good in this photo.



1- Red Bordeaux (below) - I like this one if the piece is dyed as dark as possible. But I rarely use it on my work.



2- Violet DS + Red Bor. (1:1) - I mixed this color, I don't like it.

3- Violet DS + Red Bor. (2:1) - I don't like this one either.

4- Violet DS (below) - It's ok, but I rarely use it.



5- Violet - This is one of the new ones I got a couple weeks ago. I haven't used it on any of my work yet. I am not sure if I will, it's kind of strong.

6- Black - It's black. What more can I say?

7- Copper - Another new one. This is the orange I have been looking for. I haven't used it yet.

8- Orange 3A - I never liked this one much.

9- Golden Orange - A new one. It's better than orange 3A, although I don't know if I will use it on my work.

10- Yellow 4A - Another new one. This one is very interesting. It's a very light yellow, I have not used it yet, but I am considering it for this brooch. I will definitely use it on something.

11- Gray NLN - A new one. It's kind of like black, but not as... black. I didn't know what to expect with this one, but I was hoping it would be something other than watered down black. I could get this color with a quick dip in the black dye. Maybe that should have been obvious, but I figured if they are selling a separate dye it must be something I couldn't get with black. If you leave the piece in the dye long enough it is almost black. Interestingly, this isn't the only gray they sell.

12- Orange 3A + Blue 4A (2:1) - Another one I mixed. I didn't have yellow to mix with blue, so I wanted to see what kind of green I would get with orange and blue. It's an ugly color, I've never used it.

13- Electric Blue (below) - I like this one. I bought this after I already had fast blue, but two are too similar to each other, I didn't need both of them.



14- Fast Blue (2 photos below) - I like this one a lot. I used this on my teapot.
Both of these rings are fast blue.





15- Blue 4A (2 photos below) - This is my favorite blue right now.





16- Green SCG - This one is new. I like it but I have not used it on anything yet.

17- Green AEN (below) - This one is kind of difficult to get a good color. When the color comes out right, like with this brooch, I love it. When it doesn't come out right it's nothing special.



18- Blue 4A + Orange 3A (1:1) - I mixed this at the same time I mixed #12. I don't like it.

alloys

Yesterday I worked on my new brooch some more. This piece could have been done a long time ago if I would have worked on it alone. Instead I am spreading my time around, spending a little time on it and several other half finished pieces. I don't like to work on a piece from start to finish with out taking some time off to work on other things. If I take time off I can more easily see if I am happy with the design and how it is coming out. Especially with carved pieces. I dwell on small details so long I need to take a break to see the piece is turning out overall.

I think its fine to do that, but I think I do it a little too much. I have too many pieces going. Eventually I will finish several pieces all within a short period, but it gets kind of depressing to have not finished a piece in a while, and to have a piece sitting unfinished for a long time.

I anodized the parts of my new brooch yesterday. I am not happy with it. I dyed them green, but the alloy I used didn't take the color well. I thought I was using 6061 aluminum, and maybe I was. Maybe 6061 just doesn't take green dye very well. I think I need to make sample pieces of different alloys dyed different colors. I have one big piece of 1" thick aluminum, I have no idea what alloy it is, but I used it for the base of my welder hand piece holder and it anodized great. Anyway I have to remove the anodizing and redo it a different color. The color isn't bad, its just not what I wanted.

handpiece holder

I worked on the candlesticks some more tonight. I finished anodizing the triangular pieces. Tomorrow I will work on the square ones. I also worked on a hand piece holder for my PUK 2 welder.

Milling with my Sherline mill:

I am working on the base of the hand piece holder. I have the part super glued to the angle plate. The PUK 2 is the metal box in the background.

I really need to make some kind of enclosure for the mill to keep these chips from going every where like they do now.

So I finished milling the parts and went to anodize them. Both of the parts are made from different pieces of scrap aluminum, so I don't know what the alloys are. I anodized both pieces for the same amount of time, and used the same dye. The piece on the right I anodized first. The color was very light even though I left it in the dye for almost 10 minutes. The big square piece was in the dye for about 1 minute. I like the color of the bigger piece better. I will redo the smaller piece and try to get the color to match the larger piece by anodizing it longer.