Band-Aid to Stop a Heart Attack: Aluminum Black

Good stuff---grab a bottle!

DISCLAIMER UP FRONT: IF YOU USE THIS ARTICLE FOR EVIL (LIKE DOING THIS AND NOT DISCLOSING A SCRATCHED UP MARKER WHILE SELLING IT) AND I FIND OUT, I SWEAR TO ALL THAT IS HOLY THE NEXT TIME I SEE YOU IT WILL BE DICK PUNCHES ON SIGHT.  AND I KNOW ENOUGH PEOPLE AROUND THE COUNTRY THAT I CAN GET OTHERS TO STEP IN IF NEEDED!!!

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way...we've all been there.  You're working on a marker and the tool slips.  You feel the tool lose resistance and then connect with another part on your marker.  Tactical swearing ensues.  Or you're playing on a field that's got concrete and you run or slide up to a bunker, and feel your marker kiss it.  Or maybe you're running over some uneven terrain, hit some loose leaves, and not realize that there were some even more uneven rocks beneath them until you and your marker crash into the ground.  Or you're just a bit of a clumsy dumbass and are carrying a bit more than you should, when all of a sudden you drop your gear.  It hits the ground.  And in any of the cases above, you get a sinking feeling in your stomach---I just put a scratch right across my marker.  Well, shit.

Before: Note the deeper vice scratch in the frame and tons of smaller surface scratches/pits

​Any of the above situations usually meant one of two things.  Either you get a part re-anno'ed or you live with a nice shiny blemish that catches the eye of everyone that decides to look at your marker.  And I mean shiny in a literal way here----if aluminum just glaring in the sun.  While having a few scratches isn't a big deal to a lot of us (see any one of my markers--all of them have some because they see the field), it's also nice to have your markers look as nice as they can.  

While ideally you'd re-ano it, there are several reasons why that might not be the best for you.  Maybe it's only one part with an idiot mark and you can't justify just sending it in.  Maybe the part has already hit it's limit on visits to anodizers (yes, that is a real thing, as anodizing a piece too many times can lead to loss of metal and tolerances).  Maybe it's a cost issue.  Maybe you just aren't comfortable sending your marker out to someone that you don't know.  Maybe you have to actually play with the thing and need it within a timeframe.  Or maybe you just have some weird thing where you can't be without it for longer than a day.  I don't know.  I'm not you.  

But what I do know is that there is a band aid fix that actually works pretty well and is good for any color you want, so long as it's black.

And it's called Aluminum Black or Alumablack.

After: The vice scratch is still there. The small surface scratches are barely visible.

​So, what is it?  How does it work?  And what makes it better than other terrible solutions like Sharpie or Paint Pens?

All fair questions---and know that I went into this skeptical as hell about this and came away incredibly impressed.  And keep in mind---this stuff is cheap.  Like $7 a bottle cheap.  Aluminum Black is a blue-ish clear liquid that comes in a small bottle for use on raw aluminum.  To use it is actually moronically simple.  All you need to do is clean/degrease the surface, open the bottle, grab a clean cloth/q-tip, dip it in, and then wipe it on the surface you want to blacken.  The surface needs to be raw aluminum in order to work because this isn't a dye.  It creates a chemical reaction to change the color of the aluminum and oxidize it.  

Read that last sentence again, because it's important.  That means that the aluminum that you're using it on needs to have NOT already oxidized (aka works best when the wound is fresh) or you remove the oxidation.

Once you put it on, you just wait a minute for it to do it's thing and turn black, dab it off, wait 24 hours, and seal it with a little oil.  Repeat it if it's not black enough for you.  And then you scratch stops being a shiny eye-sore and transforms into something that you really have to look to find.

Here are the official instructions, which an untrained monkey could follow:
1. Clean metal parts or area to be blackened with Birchwood Casey cleaner-degreaser or denatured alcohol and rinse with cold water.
2. Brighten area with fine steel wool to remove any surface oxide (NOTE: I didn't hit anything with steel wool and did use it one fresh wounds and old ones---the newer and/or deeper took it best).
3. Clean again and rinse.
4. Apply aluminum black with saturated swab allow to work 1 minute: rinse with cold water and wipe dry.
5. Polish lightly with soft, clean cloth.
6. Apply Birchwood Casey gun stock wax or oil to enhance and protect the finish. Allow to cure overnight for best results.

This grip panel was cut down and shaped to fit this frame as I worked on this prototype. The top of the frame was raw aluminum. This is how it looks after a couple of rounds of Aluminum Black. I WILL be ano-ing this, but for now it actually looks pretty decent. Because of the location and the coloring, you honestly wouldn't give it a second glance if I didn't mention it.

​Know a couple of things here.  It's not magic---if there's damage to a surface, it doesn't make it magically disappear.  A deep scratch isn't going to all-of-a-sudden be polished out.  It'll be black, but not magically gone.  It's also not going to change a finish from scratched to polished or matte.  It's the same surface, it's just black now.  And it's not going to be uniform should you try to do a gigantic part.  Metal isn't going to react uniformly because a metal slab isn't uniform---ask anyone who has machined about that.  It can be blotchy over surfaces, which you can deal with by using multiple applications, but will never be perfect.  In other words, this is NOT a replacement for anodizing.  But it is a great fix for scratches and small repairs.  

And why would you do it over sharpies or paint pens?  Because sharpie immediately wipes off and paint pen does looks lump and awful until it does the same.  Both look like crap and then disappear.  This is a hell of a lot better than both solutions, and will stick around a lot longer.  Both ideas suck, but this is where a lot of people land if they haven't heard of this stuff yet.  Once you use this to go black, you won't go back.  So hopefully this helps some of you out there.

There's a pretty deep ding between the 6-7 ports from the right from a concrete scratch. It blends a whole lot better, but it's not going to unscratch the barrel.

So, to recap, if you have surface scratches on a marker part and don't want to send it in for a re-ano, this stuff is great.  If you have bigger scratches, this stuff is a really good option but not magic---it's not going to polish out the damage but will make it a lot less noticeable.  If you have a small surface area of raw aluminum, it can be really useful as well.  Is it a replacement for a black anodizing job for your marker?  Good god, no.  Absolutely not.  Unless the whole thing just came off a mill raw and you're going for blotchy-as-hell, this isn't what you want.  But for the band aids that you might need---this stuff might be just the thing.

It might be something that you want to keep a bottle of around to fix up any idiot marks that you make and small incidental surface scratches.  And this is paintball---a lot of us do this just by playing the game.  It's a nice, cheap solution (ha, double meaning---got me some science jokes) that can solve a very common issue that all us run into.

There were two hairline scratches on two separate pneumatics in this picture. Can you spot them? Here's the thing---I know where they are and can't see either of the treated scratches here, and its not the spot next to the barb.