Metal Burnishing Fluid

[BKLN]

All,
I am trying to understand the workings of metal burnishing fluids, like the ones that AK Interactive is offering. Is this a "staining" or rather an "oxidation" process? I am curious about this, because I wonder if this can be used to "blacken" rails without effecting the conductivity.

Any advise is appreciated

Christian

[Design-HSB]

Hello Christian, I go to burnished nickel silver rails and clean the track with alcohol.

[mad gerald]

Christian

I am trying to understand the workings of metal burnishing fluids, like the ones that AK Interactive is offering. Is this a "staining" or rather an "oxidation" process? I am curious about this, because I wonder if this can be used to "blacken" rails without effecting the conductivity.

Any advise is appreciated

... I'm not quite sure how these fluids work, but I can assure you that, in case they work like common blackening/burnishing fluids the conductivity is definitely not affected ...

There's a Link from the AK interactive blog to some tutorial of UvDR (scroll down and/or search for UvDR-1 Burnishing Agent) ... I suspect, they only work "burnishing" white metal, tracks may look familiar but consist of different material ...

HTH (did not have the time watching/listening to the tutorial in all)

Gerald

[BKLN]

I was looking at those UvDR / AK posts, too. But in a way they confused me even more. I guess I'll give it a try!

I will keep you guys posted on the results.

[BKLN]

A quick update on my successful (!) experiments:
I ordered the "AK-Interactive Metal Burnishing" fluid, developed by Uschi VanDerRosten.

I did a very quick test with 3 pieces of track. I cleaned the track sections with soapy water. I couldn't find an appropriate plastic bowl, so I used a heavy duty ziplock bag as a substitute, which worked just fine for an initial test. I used about a 1/4 of the bottle, roughly diluted with a similar amount of water. The track has to sit completely in the solution. I used a old toothbrush to rub in the solution, making sure that all part of the track really get exposed.

The oxidation process took at least 30min, but then you could see a really nice shift towards a deep black-brownish coloration of the track. The plastic ties were not effected. After about 45min, I took the tracks out, rinsed them of with water and let them air-dry on paper towels.

The crucial test came later. I checked if the conductivity was effected, but it seemed that the metal burnishing solution had no impact on that at all, so I am very pleased with the results. So far, so good!

I planning to stain all the tracks of my current projects. I will keep you posted.

Christian

[billmart]

Christian -

Is the rail brass, aluminum, steel, or something else?

Bill Martinsen

[BKLN]

Bill,
I assume it's standard nickel-silver rail.

[NORCALLOGGER]

Is there a difference in this material from the "Blacken-It" by A-West?

[BKLN]

No idea, but I guess it has to be the same chemical.

[jim s-w]

Once the track has been treated does it come back off?  (I find gun blue does perhaps I'm using the wrong sort?)

Jim