messing with lathe and heat on some ratchet wheels.

Peter,
It looks to me as the heat effected the teeth more so than the wheel except for the bottom wheel.
I often wondered how heat would effect a bent staff.
Patrick

Looks pretty neat Peter. I really like the brownish color.

Harry

yeah the brownish looks like amber or good beer in real life hehe.

I heard the the brown and blue colors come from the difference in the heat temp. applied. I don't know if that is true or not.

the brown is from reheating again to blue temp.

another batch

Nice going peter. I like the one on top. You should experiment with some diamond compounds if you haven't already. After your lathe work, you could start with 5 micron, then go to 2. finishing with 1/2 micron will give you a mirror finish that you could then color with heat. Here's where I've gotten mine in the past:

http://www.smg-diamond.com/Compound.html

William

Thanks William that was my next step to get mirror
finish but could not find the place for the compound.

Cool idea Peter. I used the bluing machine built from specs in one of the posts here to make my ratchet wheels blue. I will say that the mirror finish is critical and that the different temps give you the colors (570 degrees F gives you deep blue). I used multiple grits of sand paper from 800, 1500, 2000, then polished with semichrome with a dremel until I got the mirror finish (will have to look up the diamond compound now . There are a few example pics too of some nice blue screws and ratchet and crown wheels if you want some ideas. I will say though that the lathe puts some nice record lines on the wheels for a nice effect! And the Amber color is nice too. I think what I like the most though is the breakup in color with the silver lines! Nice work!

Nice work Peter!

Thanks all just experimenting
pic of finish watch
looks better in life

another one done

Really nice Peter adds quality to the finish

IMHO

Very nice Peter!

thank you guys. I'm trying my best.