Low-tech coating is a microscopic marvel

[@BPSspace]

Just here to show my support for any work holding strategy that involves hot glue 0:43

[@BreakingTaps]

Hot glue ftw! Was a real dodgy tophat removal operation because I suck at planning, and the hot glue helps keep chatter down. 😅

[@anon-means-anon]

I also like to live dangerously, so I respect it.

[@canonicaltom]

It's not that different from the more common method of using paraffin. ;)

[@gljames24]

I hot glue we trust!

[@JustAnotherAlchemist]

It could be worse, he could be using... IDK.... blue tape and superglue. But. who. would. ever. do. that.😅

[@mortcs]

Give bead blasting a try to rough up the surface. Bead blasting and parkerizing are often used in gunsmithing.

[@ASCENDANTGAMERSAGE]

We use wheel blasting at our facility.

[@iteerrex8166]

I was gonna just say what you said. Sand or bead blasting is good for any coating, and easy to itch complex surfaces.

[@alert2]

I read that as bread and was very confused

[@GameBacardi]

@@alert2 You are so hungry, your sight got weak

[@LordDragox412]

Gunsmith: Anyway I started bead blasting.

[@uzifouryoutwosay]

I’m a small scale firearms manufacturer, and I use parkerizing during a two step coating process beneath ceramic paint. I’ve found that blasting the parts with aluminum oxide media gives you the correct blasting profile for a nice coating. Temperature and time also affect the final result. I think the higher the temperature, the lighter the coating color, but also the harder the coating. Whereas lower temperatures and longer time make for a darker finish, that’s supposedly less durable. Generally 175-180 deg F gives me the result I’m looking for. Furthermore you can also take those pieces that didn’t give you a desirable result, blast them lightly again, and redo the costing process to good effect. I’ve found that if a part has been parkerized before, and the finish is worn, there’s a fair chance you can degrease it and coat it without blasting as there are still manganese phosphate crystals on the substrate that provide nucleation sites for the reaction.

[@jamesfenton7338]

Amazing things happen when the oil film is removed, I just use brake cleaner and air to clean the part. There is no substitute for non-chlorinated cleaner in a can, it's very useful for engine assembly, ie gasket surfaces. When I oil my firearms, I just drench it in ATF, and blow the excess away.

[@arthurmoore9488]

@@jamesfenton7338 It took me a bit to understand the last sentence. Given you mentioned firearms, "ATF, and blow the excess away." has a completely different meaning!

[@duffysgunsmithing2585]

thats what i do ,gives the paint something to hold on to.👍

[@gimpygardner3377]

I'm curious about this as a coating for automotive nuts and bolts. Would this stay rust proof. How much durability when using wrenches? Better than paint??

[@uzifouryoutwosay]

@@gimpygardner3377 so it’s only rust resistant, but when oiled it’s nearly rust proof. As far as durability, it’s better than paint, but the underlying material will be the issue as even if your coating is durable, the(relatively) soft material of a bolt head will yield. Also depending on how long you run your coating process and how thick the layer you generate, the wear properties improve.

[@lephtovermeet]

Casually mentions machining 4140. Casual shows off a sweet swiss lathe. Casual drops having an electron microscope. Bro is lit.

[@ngls]

It's probably in an research environment

[@MyOtherCarIsAPlane]

@@nglsit’s in his garage

[@BobBob-gv9wx]

I agreed with the last casual sentence until I read it right. Seeing all these nice tools also gave me an electron

[@firstmkb]

@@MyOtherCarIsAPlaneI might have one in my garage too. It’s difficult to say, but I definitely do not have a car there.

[@CYellowan]

Dude, watch his older videos. He got some insane tools made. He is honestly really great!

[@killianramsey4805]

In the powdered metal industry we have "lifetime bearings". This is where we press a bronze bushing and fill the porosity with oil through a process know as impregnation. This makes the bearing surface slowly leak out oil throughout its lifetime, keeping it lubricated without the need for additional oiling

[@Rakvalde]

I am 3D printing some metal parts that will be moving alot in a clean & dry area at work. I never thought of impregnating the part to not have to go inside and grease it. Which should be easy if its 3D printed metal powder I guess. Seems there is always new stuff to learn.

[@killianramsey4805]

@@Rakvalde The way we do it is to submerge it in oil and draw a vacuum. I imagine this could be done on a much smaller scale for your purposes

[@Broken_Yugo]

I've never heard an oil impregnated bronze bearing called that, always the trademarked "oilite". They go a lot longer if there's also a wick around the outside feeding in more oil and that's maintained. I've had box fans where I kept the wicks wet and the usual failure is motor overheat from dust buildup, years of running for months straight if I remember to keep them blown out.

[@Jcreek201]

Oilite has been around since the 1930s, never heard of “lifetime bearing.”

[@thebuckster101]

​@Rakvalde it's metal powder centered together leaving small pores, you just simply have a port that you can fill with oil that can come in contact with the bearing and ot will constantly wick oil towards the center where it's being used up and you can refill it if needed

[@cipaisone]

Your title catches exactly what this is about. Conversion coatings, particularly phosphating coatings, are really marvellous. They are so old and used that almost no one in academia look at them, but the intricacies and just the beauty of their structure at the microscopic level always struck me. I would love to see this project extending, both towards other conversion coatings (like zinc phosphate, anodisation) and by including some corrosion and perhaps tribological test.

[@BreakingTaps]

Agreed! Definitely want to look at more types of coatings now, I'm intrigued and curious what other types look like. Would love to run some functional tests, maybe I can cobble together a COF tester and tribometer!

[@cipaisone]

@@BreakingTaps definitely go, if you can, for a tribotest. Analysis of friction response during tribotesting, and of wear mechanisms by inspection of samples afterwards is also very cool, especially when showing some nice SEM micrographs. Looking forward to see something in that direction :)

[@8__vv__8]

@@BreakingTaps passivation and precious metal plating are deep rabbit holes, but gold is fun, porous and fluffy and fun lol

[@arthurmoore9488]

@@8__vv__8 Okay. Gold as fluffy I was not expecting. I also didn't expect a gold plated surface to porous, but that's less surprising that fluffy. What makes it fun?

[@paulmanson253]

At a guess,just which plating bath. Used to have a book on plating. It was published back when obtaining the cyanides was just mail-order. For copper plating,copper sulphate and DC electricity will yield a plate. For really good plating,extra ingredients needed. For gold plating, perhaps 15 or more ingredients. There was no explanation as to which list of ingredients was to be used when. Or dilutions,or temperatures. All critical. From memory,bubbling compressed air is important to plate nickel. Something of a black art to establish just what is desired.​@@arthurmoore9488

[@H3liosphan]

That AFM imaging NEVER gets old! Amazing stuff as always.

[@Akuseiko]

I love that one of the most advanced imaging techniques we have today is essentially "Imma poke it with a stick!".

[@WeirdPros]

@@Akuseiko the more thing change, the more they stay the same

[@scslre]

yeah, such a cool thing.

[@lbgstzockt8493]

The AFM shots are genuinely amazing, it’s super interesting what different surfaces look like at extreme magnification.

[@friskydingo5370]

Toyaly agree 👍

[@icspicorp]

Agreed! We had a hunch when we saw "coating" and "microscopic" that the nGauge would make an appearance 😁

[@Preso58]

I've been doing a lot of Parker phosphate coating using Jane Kits chemicals. They recommend preheating the parts in boiling water, activating them in Metex M dry acid salt, and running the parkerising solution at 95C. The Metex M step preconditions the steel surface to make it more reactive when it goes into the Parker phosphate. I've made my own home brew manganese phosphate solution and it's just phosphoric acid, manganese dioxide and water with steel wool dissolved in it. In my view, it's a way better coating than any cold blue that I've tried. Regards, Preso

[@itoibo4208]

is that coating that is left on the part made of manganese? The structure reminds me of manganese nodules.

[@carlhitchon1009]

I thought of you immediately when the subject was parkerizing.

[@dzonc]

I like the longer videos, but this shorter video format was actually really fun.

[@Yezpahr]

"Parkerization". Standup math fans rejoice, very loudly.

[@Kebabrulle4869]

Parkerization: the process of being wrong and declaring that you were at least close.

[@UCXEO5L8xnaMJhtUsuNXhlmQ]

The first trial could be called a Parker parkerization

[@EdwardNavu]

Adds resilience against atychiphobia.

[@graysaltine6035]

@@Kebabrulle4869 Also a term for American red wines following the Bordeaux model, after wine critic Robert Parker who invested a bunch of his own money into New-World wine production in the 90s and used his influence as a popular critic to fluff them - a "Parkerized" wine being a high-alcohol-content cab/merlot blend in new oak casks for strong tannins. Too many damn Parkers in this world.

[@nfineon]

What we are looking at, is a perfect parker -square- rectangle coating! The sides aren't exactly even in distribution , but close enough 😅

[@theinfernalcraftsman]

Well done. It's been a common coating in engine rebuilding for a very long time. Reground cam shafts are parkerized for better break in. Not roller cams but flat tappet cams. The coating holds oil to prevent the lobes from being wiped out from poor lubrication at the first start.

[@built-from-scratch]

Imagine posting two videos in the span of 10 days, couldn't be me haha. Super cool to see how big of a microscopic change there was from a pretty small macroscopic change in the coating process

[@justynsweeting]

I just watched your video on the terraria computer after reading this comment. Amazing work, I subbed

[@finndriver1063]

Could you do a comparison between this and various methods of chemical bluing, such as selenium dioxide and 'rust' bluing? Comparing to heat bluing would also be super cool, perhaps with some clickspring clips for good measure. Cuprous verdigris is also fun.

[@goodfis624]

I double it. Cold blueing is much simpler process. Maybe not a wear resistant, but def very good against rust.

[@AldoSchmedack]

Heat your part first to temp before dunking! Pro tip from gunsmith!

[@BreakingTaps]

Aha, yeah that makes sense! I did notice a "lag" period before they started bubbling, was probably coming up to temp. Will keep that in mind for future batches!

[@meatybtz]

And it also helps the solution to work better if you feed it some soft iron before you park your first item. Temp and the lack of prepping the solution with some raw iron is why the 2nd one was so much better than the first. Some use a powdered iron in a bag before first park cycle.

[@FlesHBoX]

It's just wild to imagine that a surface that feels so smooth is actually so rough. I guess this might explain why this kind of coated metal has an almost "soft" feel to it when you handle it, compared to a freshly milled surface, which feel smooth, but.... different... almost harder.

[@CRneu]

Our tactile sense only has so much resolution.

[@exilefaxen4860]

I do PVD coating for industriell clients and we polish the aktiv part to a mirror finish to reduce wear and we get an extrem improvment in durability. Interesting to see that you also can get an improvement with the opossit aprotch. Sry for my Bad englisch and greetings from Germany.

[@sxgamesert2030]

I'm more in the firearms space but if memory serves the PVD process is the "general" term for the "brandname" DLC (Dimond like carbon) finish. My question is how expensive is it to get a part done? What are some of the challenges with the finish relating to the part and it's geometry? Thanks!

[@jameswyatt1304]

Ihr Englisch ist besser als mein Deutsch, als ich vor Jahrzehnten in der Nähe von Rosenheim lebte, und Ihr Kommentar war gut. Kein Problem und chuß!

[@FriendlyCynic]

Ben from Applied Science has a video on how to get microscope slides optically clean. I think he just uses Acetone or Methanol which can be used on steel parts as well. If I remember correctly, you just suspend the parts in a beaker with a solvent at the bottom, and heat it. The hot vapors will condense on the parts and pull any organics off as it drips off. Love your content

[@onemoreguyonline7878]

Whipping out the afm like it's a kid's thing or a regular tool in a shop was honestly the coolest part of this video.

[@LiviuGelea]

the fact that you thought you don't need pickling is... interesting. The short acid bath is supposed to disolve the thin oxides created by even minutes of exposure to air. It's why you do it immediately before any surface treatment

[@BreakingTaps]

Very possible I was wrong about that (and perhaps that's why the first batch didn't look great)! I did give them a swirl in citranox (acidic alconox basically) which I didn't mention, but I don't think it would really count as pickling since it's relatively mild compared to say HCL.

[@LiviuGelea]

​@@BreakingTapsI'm no expert in this. I may be very wrong. Especially since your approach eventually worked.

[@HeikoSchlabach]

@@BreakingTaps Pickling with citranox widely used in professional galvanization processes so i'd definitely count it as pickling

[@dongvermine]

Wrong

[@LiviuGelea]

@@dongvermine whose comment is wrong? Mine? If you gave time can you explain? We're all trying to learn here.

[@friskydingo5370]

Material science is always interesting. I really appreciate these videos. The small projects and updates make a huge difference. It is always nice to see your soultuons to the simple and the complex . Stay awesome 👌 👍

[@JarheadCrayonEater]

I used to black oxide parts at my dad's plating shop, along with primarily electroless nickel planting. The black oxide was my favorite look, but least favorite process. Pre-soaking in heated hydrochloric acid for about 30 seconds to 1.5 minutes will usually prep the surface and remove some of the variations in texture.

[@johnsherborne3245]

Nice to find another plater here, looks like skipping the pretreatment , no electroclean or acid dip was not a good idea. It’s strange how the people who proses stuff for a living know what they are doing and sometimes, why.

[@AdvantestInc]

The parkerizing process is fascinating! The attention to detail really shows how small adjustments can make a huge difference in the final result.

[@ryebis]

I've done parkerising so many times, it's the first time I've seen the surface magnified. We switched to plasma nitriding with black oxide when that became available, it'd be interesting to compare it when you get the chance. Good video 👍

[@Ziraya0]

When I used to work at a job shop, we would run parts through a Tumbler before sending them for surface treatment. Tumblers are pretty fun gizmos and very loud. I assume you know about them but in case, it's a bucket of some description held up on big springs, with a big shaker motor in there somehow. You fill the bucket with carbide bits shaped like dry catfood and it spends an hour or two ramming the carbide catfood and your parts together randomly and at high frequency. This results in a very evenly and finely rough surface. Sometimes you want the smoothest cleanest surface before doing a surface treatment, sometimes you want evenly and finely rough; but you never want irregular toolmarks and such.

[@paradiselost9946]

i spent hours with my hands in a rumbler... could spend your life figuring out how to get different finishes... from mirror polishes to bead blast to just... "got the brazing flux off"... different medias, different amounts of media, different detergents, amounts of liquid, and the weights on the shaker... i always liked a 90 degree offset, gave a nice "figure 8" swirl... always sad, watching these YT videos of people trying to make them with no real concept of how they work.

[@Ziraya0]

@@paradiselost9946 Mirror finish? Amazing! This workplace was not one where leadership tolerated knowing things or having skills, I think we changed out the media once and probably just used like, flood coolant or dish soap, I don't really remember.

[@paradiselost9946]

@@Ziraya0 lol, management... at one point i started recording conversations, as invariably, when something worked it was "their" idea, and when it didnt, it was "my" idea. if i start elaborating this could be a very long reply.... *shutsup*

[@rich1051414]

Parkerizing is the effective replacement to bluing when it comes to firearms. It produces a more durable resistant coating. Bluing is effectively controlled rusting, which then prevents the metal under it from rusting.

[@d.b.1176]

Like anodizing aluminum?

[@keisisqrl]

@@d.b.1176very similar, I think! But phosphating and bluing both require a light oiling, which is obviously not necessary for aluminum.

[@ianmcewan8851]

Love the AFM view! It would be nice to see how the coating looks after some time. Something like take a control specimen that just sits on a shelf and scan it every six or 12 months.

[@JFirn86Q]

Would love to see more coating stuff like this, comparing other conversion coating and such too!

[@benjamincolumbus]

This video was an excellent way to bring together your capabilities, it blew my mind when the AFM render came up.

[@Bluelightzero]

Never really thought about why guns are black.

[@sasjadevries]

It's part style/tradition, part stealth, and part the fact there are multiple cheap techniques for rust prevention, that happen to give a dark coating.

[@johnsmith1474]

They aren't necessarily black.

[@clayton8or]

Cerakote and IR detection is changing this, but the vast history of cheap and effective wear and corrosion prevention methods almost all either natrually being or easily converted to black certainly help consistency. Parkerization, Bluing, Nitride, and black dyed Anodization, as most of them.

[@andrewscovich___4774]

The gun parts that are aluminum or aluminum alloys are anodized. It uses a type of electrolysis to create an evenly rough surface, that is then coated with some type of paint.

[@JohnDlugosz]

Or chrome. Or custom dyed, but that's a more modern phenomenon.

[@Nighthawkinlight]

Your SEM images are great and all, but the AFM just blows me away. The scans look way better than the first time you featured it. Have you just optimized the settings or has it been upgraded? I'd really like to get my hands on one of those.

[@BreakingTaps]

Thanks! I did get an isolation table at one point which helps (mainly prevents big artifacts when trucks drive by, which would previously force me to restart). But mostly just gotten better tweaking scan settings, better post-processing, and improved my Blender-fu to make the renders look nicer :)

[@capitalggeek]

One trick taught to me by an ancient armorer was to coat parkerized parts with vaseline & bake them at 150F for several hours. Once wiped off, it darkens and hardens the finish through some kind of magic. He mentioned cosmoline and hot warehouses, but I think he may have been joking.

[@LanceMcCarthy]

That AFM is amazing, what a great investment for your lab. The 3d models you're generating for us are top notch.

[@jscancella]

definitely you should do this for other coatings, like a rust blue, and ceracote!

[@cvoisineaddis]

That first AFM you showed us might be my favorite AFM model I've seen yet on your channel, also good job on the material and rendering.

[@TheBackyardScientist]

“We can check the surface with the electron microscope” 😩 “Now let’s pop this in my atomic force microscope” 😭 I’ve made my own parkerizing solution before with the commercial phosphoric metal etching stuff and manganese dioxide from old alkaline batteries and it was a very dense and thick coating. iirc I heated the solution to boiling too. Your stuff might be a little old or a maybe a more delicate preparation for guns? I guess it doesn’t really matter because it came out great in the end!

[@Blue-bf8lv]

wow man, them shots are incredible

[@Shocker99]

I'd like to see more coatings under the microscope :)

[@icspicorp]

Us too!

[@IlusysSystems]

Low tech is heating piece to about 350 degC and dumping it in used motor oil :D Produces dark brown surface also quite resistant to rusting (when not in contact with liquid water at least)

[@Katchi_]

100% failure rate.

[@nonegone7170]

Especially great if you use it in structural parts with that heating! ; )

[@Th3Arbiter666]

itll be nonstick thats for sure lol

[@IlusysSystems]

@@nonegone7170 Common structural steel does not degrade by heating to these temperatures. I guess at like 700degC you may start loosing carbon, but probably not much. Otherwise hand forging would be difficult.

[@PixelSchnitzel]

The parkerizing bath also has nitric acid. Now, Cerakote or Molyresin on top of zinc parkerizing makes for a *truly* durable surface!

[@Orofino6]

Really similar to how TriboTEX works to prevent engine/machine wear. Except instead of using electrical potential difference, it uses friction as the application energy and prevents hydrogen diffusion. 2:07

[@garygenerous8982]

Love this so much. It’s amazing seeing these impossibly small details on every day objects.

[@Hungrybird474]

That second attempt is the coating that’s desired . Good job brother

[@Psyopcyclops]

I can’t handle how interesting this is! That comparison of the milled surface and the coated surface with the atomic force microscope was insanely cool. I might try parkerize my watch band.

[@mathiaschaves7604]

Video sugestion: would be fun to see you rank your projects in a tier list. As you develop you workshop in the highest level of "DIYness" I think some of the projects have become, although amazing, so out of proportion from what mortals call a DIY that we cant even begin to apreciate your work the way we should. I think a tier list would be a good video to reconect with the mortal plane and maybe incentivise some of us to ascend too (Hope you don't mind the jokes). Could be in a scale of technical or theoretical difficulty, "coolness", satisfaction of the end result, affordability, etc. Anyway, your channel is awesome.

[@smellsofbikes]

That surface looks really great, and I like your background music.

[@Voulltapher]

Another excellent video. Love how you keep in informational instead of sensational.

[@HASANonYT]

That was awesome thank you! Though I would have liked to see the scanning results after oiling the part

[@calchen6603]

Would love to see the structure if you had pickled it, nothing beats a freshly microetched surface for subsequent surface modification

[@daffyf6829]

That's what I was thinking regarding the pickle skipping. That it etches the surface as well as deoxidizes. Apparently in a response to another comment, he did do a quick acid bath on the second one that he didn't mention in the video. I would wager the light acid bath did more for the surface prep than the 120 grit wheel.

[@BladSG]

This short video is all i needed to have a good ending on this weekend. Thank you!

[@DonAshcraft]

I just stumbled on your channel. Nice story, but about halfway through you break out the electron microscope, and diagram the molecular actions, and then things got really exciting and really cool! 😊 Thanks! 😊 My limited experience with parkerization is it's good with parts that don't get scratched. You've probably already put these in service and you can see where they're tightened down that it just scratches the parkarization right away. One of the reasons they have also lost favor in gunsmithing. It still has its place in many ways but not where something will get scratched, bumped or dinged.

[@beaurex4756]

Very informative video. Thanks for sharing. I really enjoy learning the chemical and physical elements that are involved in these types of processes. Metallurgy is very interesting.

[@notsonominal]

This guys has the coolest toys, erhm, i mean tools!

[@HaydenHatTrick]

Jesus. I've actually wondered about these coatings for so long. My parents had a decorative set of candle holders made by a blacksmith at movie world when I was young and they did this blacking treatment to it, but I could never find information. I always marvelled at the durability of it.

[@andersjjensen]

Very VERY neat to see this process in electron microscope resolution. When I first heard of the process my though was "how's that going to help any better than classic rust bluing?" and now we have the answer: better oil retention.

[@MatterMadeMoot]

From a fellow mat sci enthusiast, good stuff dude. That 3D texture map is really cool.

[@tanzanite6695]

Always wondered how the finish was "non dimensional", and now I know :)

[@imaninerrah3127]

WOW this was super cool. I hadn't thought about what's going on that small of a scale

[@billmurphy9921]

Back in the day when I worked at a Tier 1 automotive parts plant, we coated steel components withe something called E-Coat or with Black Oxide. Both primarily acted as corrosion resistance.

[@HamishBarker]

great video. Re your noted residual organics on the bare metal parts, for future reference, when aluminizing or silvering glass, they have to be super clean. a very effective way to remove all organic contaminants which I use is first a wipe acetone and isoprop wipe, then scrub 3 times with precipitated chalk (calcium carbonate, not magnesium carbonate) slurry with demin water rinses in between and a final strong rinse. this might work also with your metal parts. the weakly basic chalk seems to helps by both physically and chemically remove organics.

[@dddddyyn]

It would be really awesome if this became a series. I would love to see hot vs cold blueing and cerakote under the atomic force microscope.

[@kaushaltimilsina7727]

I didn't know about Parkerizing. But, a porous layer of crystal growth that holds onto oil like a sponge for wear protection, that was very cool!

[@BrentKruegerZapperz]

Atomic force microscope! Dude has some tools, great video.

[@piconano]

Fascinating! What would a polished aluminum which is then anodized look like under your microscope?

[@BreakingTaps]

On the todo list for sure! Should look like really tiny honeycomb pattern, based on what I've seen/read elsewhere. The pores are very small, sub-micron if I remember correctly

[@piconano]

@@BreakingTaps excellent.

[@Ecclesiasticus]

Pickling is the process that not only cleans, but also chemically creates a rough surface. Its much preferred to the mechanical ways.

[@tulsatrash]

Neat. Blue and straw some metal next.

[@ParkerDD]

As a Parker, this was an interesting video to watch haha

[@dogprowilhelm7630]

Lower abrasive bead blasting for a smoother more connsistant surface. It's the nucleation sites for crystal growth that determine the final result and hope it helps. Preheat the metal in an oven to 200°F. It will be slightly hotter than the heated solution before dunking. Phosphate can be sensitive to light so turn off the light and check after 1-2hrs.❤

[@sentinelav]

In 3D rendering, we use a microfacet model for handling surface properties, so it's really cool to see these details close up!

[@dubmfg]

Tight and dense with info, great work.

[@AdlersAesthetics]

Love this kind of content, short but interesting.

[@Alfred-Neuman]

God I love the electron microscope images! If I could get any of these expensive machines it would definitely be an electron microscope.

[@jonob6404]

I did electro polishing and plating. One big effort was to make sure no work pieces were touching each other or the bath bottom or sides. Everything had to be fully suspended on copper hooks or you would get inconsistencies or shadowing

[@C-M-E]

I'm a huge proponent of surface coatings, though I've wanted to see one under a TEM/STEM, I've never had the opportunity outside of my lab 'scope. Very intriguing results that support my theories!

[@AlexLancashirePersonalView]

When I had my engineering business, we made drive pulleys for Multi V drives. All were finished with a similar process.

[@hodor3024]

I cover my parkerized parts in calcium sulfonate grease. Better corrosion resistance for longer, better wear resistance. I don't understand why anyone would want to use a thin oil. It's worse at everything except being thin.

[@harmlesscreationsofthegree1248]

Very cool sir, lovely imaging as always

[@MaseratiChris556]

I love firearms so this was fantastic knowledge! Also explains the fudd lore of keeping a thin coat of oil

[@elijahaitaok8624]

awesome! You might wanna look at traditional blued steel next, its even simpler than a parkerized finish

[@dksmith605]

The pickling step does more than just remove corrosion, it etches the surface to provide a better and more consistent finish for subsequent steps. I'd be quite interested for you to inspect a range of surface preparations under the electron microscope. Take a look at; freshly machined, sanded, scotchbrite, sandblasted, acid etched, etc. Then parkerize all those parts and inspect again, you'll see the difference that surface preparation makes.

[@curtisroberts9137]

As others have mentioned, abraxive blast will help. Use about 120 grit sand or similar, no glass. Glass beeds wont create the surface texture you want. Once the surface is etched with the abrasive blast you will get a much better coating.

[@jimsvideos7201]

Anodizing on aluminium could be a logical follow-on. I can only make the suggestion; taking time to make videos for us is a kindness and I’m happy to follow along with whatever you find interesting. 😀

[@tehlaser]

the electron and atomic force microscope images are mindbending

[@testing2517]

Man that AFM is always so cool to see.

[@itoibo4208]

reminds me of a record player

[@treschlet]

you were correct, that was indeed neat!

[@FelixUmbra]

I wonder how this differs from Hot Dip Black Oxide in durability and look under the devices you have. I used to do Black oxide where I work, I still have some personal parts that are Black without any rust more than 10 years later.

[@c0rr4nh0rn]

If you have time/opportunity, doing an episode of surface "coatings" would be really cool (Blueing, Nitriding, anodizing)

[@Astroponicist]

rolling the parts in small particles of 'Frit' glass will give a very consistent pattern of scratches with an even roughness.

[@primo1331]

That crystal growth is cool to see!

[@Hungrybird474]

Nodules , cracks and crystal growth coating sounds awesome .

[@Whytho2000]

For sure want an update on how the coating holds up!!!

[@ohschmitt8835]

as others have suggested bead blast or sand blasting will help get a more uniform coating also the acid bath beforehand will help degrease the parts to help with a more uniform coat

[@connormccall2087]

I would do a fine sand blast. One neet thing is when your mag parkerizing, you can hot blue after to produce a super black Finish.

[@Theonekhaled1]

I would love to see more footage from the other surface treaatments you wrote in the list. Especially DLC, even though you didn't mention that one :)

[@twen7yseven]

Cool stuff. Nice microphotography :)

[@gregskuza7166]

Please give us in update on wear and tear of these parts after some time. I find parkerized coating to be very easy to scratch and I always wondered if it affected the coatings resistance to rust or its only superficial… great video

[@sleigh4019]

Love the grey park looks on some of the guns...seems most all are going towards nitrite types finishs

[@edgeeffect]

Nice... I like the premise of just doing an everday machine shop operation and then shoving it under the microscope.

[@JordanBeagle]

This guy just has all the cool microscopes!

[@carlosspicyweiner7734]

Sandblasting is best for getting a good coating and temp should be between 170F and 200F. You’ll get a great coating every time!