Heat anodization works by artificially coaxing the natural oxides that grow on titanium over time to bond more readily with the oxygen in the air. Titanium oxide relects light differently based on how thick it has grown, and so the colors change from a gold to purple to blue, and so on. The same effect can be achieved by electrecution, but this is the poor man's way of doing it which doesn't require any kind of titanium wire, conductor solution or power source.
The biggest problem I see people encountering is that their "flaming" looks extremely dull after it's finished. To give you some comparison, I heat anodize nearly all of my knives, custom and customized, and they look extremely bright:
The problem I have found is most customizers "flame" media blasted titanium, and this does not produce a very bright effect, but rather a subdued and (in my opinion) inferior looking finish. While there are different ways of achieving good results in brightening up the finish, I prefer hitting the buffing wheel. It takes a very long time to polish titanium correctly and it needs to be taken to a mirror polish. On top of that, one of my signature finishes, the Cosmic finish, is jeweled after polishing, producing a further holographic effect which looks great when anodized.
After mirror polishing, anodization isn't as straight forward as taking a blow torch to titanium. It requires some significant finesse to get the finish even, and not everyone has the patience to do it. The Cosmic finish, for example, is a very specific shade of purple/blue in which the centers of the jeweling swirls turn blue but the rest of the titanium is left purple, and this is extremely difficult to do with heat anodization given the time it takes to turn purple colored titanium to blue is near instantaneous. After anodizing I usually polish the titanium further to make sure there is no carbon residue from the torch and let it cool naturally.
As far as maintaining a good heat anodized finish, it's relativly easy. Inferior "flamed" finishes will wear off with time as the titanium's media blast scratches. However anodized titanium is actually harder wearing than unanodized titanium and has a tendency to hide minor scratches, especially my Cosmic finish, which wears nearly as well as a stonewash. Anodized titanium does need to be cleaned occasionally as the oils from your hands will cause the finish to dull over time. Washing the titanium with warm soapy water and then drying lightly on a towel will restore the finish to luster and is the best way to keep your properly finished heat anodized Ti looking good. After several years the finish will wear down, in which case it's very simple to reanodize the titanium, and this is a service I do for free under my warrantee.
If you have any questions about anodizing titanium or my refinishing services, please feel free to send me an email to willmooncustomknives@gmail.com. Good luck and Merry Christmas!
Will
