I couldn't stand it any longer. The hardest part was picking one of my lights that I didn't care if I ruined it. Took one of my least favorite lights, a Monster Flashlight P7C-900. I have to say it turned out much better than I thought it would. I put it in the oven and turned on the broil for about 20 minutes.
Now that I’ve had a chance to play around with this process a bit I’ll give my thoughts and feedback and I’d be interested to hear from others as well.
Most of my lights/parts turned copper within 10 minutes. Some of the smaller/thiner parts began turning much sooner (closer to 5 minutes or so).
This effect IMO looks better when there is some knurling on the flashlight. Conversely the effect is least attractive (to me) when the light is smooth and you let all of the parts match each other.
It is interesting to see a dark (black) light turn medium light copper.
Once the change in color begins it progresses pretty rapidly so it’s hard to notice just before the change and it’s hard to control if you would like a deeper tone.
If lights were originally available in either black or copper most of us would still probably not have picked copper
To me the fun aspect of this process is to learn how it works, how to control it and then to picture the effect ahead of time so that you can have something more interesting than an all copper light.
I baked lights that were originally black as well as lights that were originally sort of dark tan or dark olive and the color after the baking process is still more or less the same…copper.
This is an effect that also looks better on smaller lights IMO (P60 and smaller).
It’s also only worth it to me for lights that are easily taken apart with no chance of ruining the light by taking it apart.
Anyone have any different thoughts or experiences?
Just have a minute, Bryan before I head off to work. Good points, all. Copper is not exactly my favorite color, which is why I'm happy with the C8 in the multi shades. My best experiment was with my Yezl Z1 - turned out gunmetal/brown, not really copper. Breathed new life into a light I didn't really like before. The act of taking it apart and putting it back together seems to have helped it's performance. I had another light that I could not get completely apart so I couldn't bake it. Maybe someday I'll figure out how to fully disassemble it, but for now I'm afraid I'll break it if I do.
I found watching the process fascinating. In the oven the color change was more gradual, but also harder to see. Looking at all the different colors and hues achieved on different lights was cool. This has been a great thread.
I tried this out on a cheap torch i got for my daughter. I put it under the grill as close as I could with some foil under neath. It took about 10 minutes to turn this bronze colour. Its a nice colour though the photos dont do it justice.
(sorry if the photos arn't great its my first attempt)
I would be suprised if baking the sand will change the color very much. If you bake a black host long enough it will go a sand colour but it will need to get very hot. I have noticed baking can improve the anno on some poorly ano’d lights.
Sorta hated this host for the most part. Something kinda cool about it now. I am presently debating about whether or not to put the head and the tail cap in as well, but for much longer so they come out a brighter copper colour. I like contrasting colours.
It really did come out gold. Well, the head and the knurled part of the body anyway. There is actually a separate piece between the knurling and the head which came out a sort of greyish army green type colour. The tail piece came out the same way, although it’s hard to tell in the photo. Seems that there were two different sorts of anodizing in play.
Now that you mention it, I can see the greenish tint. That turned out very nice. I like it much better than the Solarforce sand color (which looks more like a pimp's tooth :p ).
It really does look very very nice in person, and there is more contrast between the greyish green and the gold. But I only have my shitty phone camera to use at the moment unfortunately.