I have a few more details regarding the lighter :
- I’ve discovered Zippo inserts don’t actually fit in my lighter, they are a little too skinny, they basically drop in and pop out really easily therefore I stayed with the one that came with the lighter, not a huge fan of the whole fully brass lighter experience, so I will buy a spare Zorro insert just to be sure it fits, overall nothing to complain about, I knew I’d have to change that from the get go and honestly I forgot to ask the seller if it was possible to have a steel insert right away
- The brass insert is somewhat softish, if you are used at grabbing a Zippo insert from the windguard and just yanking if off, you must be a little more careful with this one as you can feel the windguard might get squashed or bent if you grab it too tightly, again nothing major and one cannot expect brass to behave the same way steel does.
- The outer finish, this surprised me a little bit, I am not a fan of the whole China Gold Bling style, I got the polished brass version with the curved lid, and it was just too much as far as shine and bling effect, I tried forcing a patina with vinegar and salt immersions for hours to no result.
I then decided to lightly buff off what I thought might be some sort of varnish on the outer layer and I’ve found out that the lighter is solid brass, which is then plated with some sort of silvery metal (I would imagine Chrome or Nickel) which is the treated to obtain the dreaded fake gold effect, probably by using some nitrate, blueing, or something like that but clearly not a varnish.
Needless to say I did not care for the gold finish, and neither for the chrome plating underneath it, after a couple of nights of elbow grease and sand paper my lighter is now naked brass, I am getting now some scary fine grain sandpaper (1000-1500-2000-2500-3000) and I will finish the surface to develop a nice patina over time
One added bonus of my obsessiveness was that by sanding all the faces of the lighter I got rid of a slight misallignment between the lid and the body of the lighter, it was basically protruding by a hair on one side, and missing the same amount of thickness on the opposite one, after removing the finish and a couple extra passes to dial down the scratch situation I created, both faces are now dead even.
Overall I think the whole DIY experience has made me like the lighter more as I got to customize it to my liking.
You could probably wait for the finish to wear out by itself but it seems quite durable and well applied so that would probably take years, I am not willing to wait that much and without some serious constant manipulation it would probably wear off in pathces here and there leaving you with a dalmatian lighter effect which I’d rather avoid
I’ll load some pics on imgur once I am fully done and upload all of them including intermediate steps showing the chrome being removed.
Lovely lovely item, very happy with my purchase and it cost pretty much the same as my Zippo Armor in polished brass but with a much higher build quality.
The only thing that makes it less than perfect is that mine has the 5-Hinge setup instead of the 3-Hinge one that CRX shows, I do not think the 3-Hinge is available for the curved lid ones, but that is truly a minor “inconvenience” I can easily live with