That would be "Alan's Book on C3 Alchemy and Plating/Coating Replication", and I'm waiting for it to be put to print!

 

Sorry for the delay, Saturdays are go to town days for us rural folks.

Anyhow, yes, you are removing the color by polishing because the color is actually a heat-produced oxidation. Different temperatures will produce different colors, and that will also vary by the composition of the steel.

In your second picture that certainly appears to have been produced by heat, as the pattern of the color follows the "tempering rainbow". In this picture the blue is close to the weld with the browner being further way. This is exactly what I would expect the colors to be when produced from heat. See the attached picture of the tempering color chart. As you can see, the blue produced at a higher heat than the brown which is what we see in your picture.

Many of these colors can also be produced by using chemicals, which also oxidize the steel, just without using heat. Different chemicals, used for different duration's produce different colors. See Bill Worden's site (http://www.steel-fx.com) for a pretty good selection of patina chemicals.

To reproduce exactly what you have there, heat would be the way to go, although a few practice runs to get what you want. For this a hand-held butane torch might do the job, may take an oxy-acetylene set to get enough heat for sure. Do it in a circular motion around the shaft, right at the weld and you'd reproduce. Chemicals might work, but would take a lot more experimentation.

 

Boy there is a lot of great information going on back and forth in this post. I agree with the part of learning a lot and not knowing what the heck you are doing. I also agree with both of you that it is fun trying to duplicate what GM did only where at home with limited resources. Alan I really like the finish on the short shafts and hope you will get back to us when you have documented all that was done.
R

 

Alan, I've done tons (well, a lot of parts) of bolts in phosphate for Camaro Restorations and what I've used on Camaro drive-shafts for the weld is gun bluing. I've also used that on the drag link which was a forging and had a blue type appearance. I was working on my half shafts for our 67 today. Also, X2 on the rust prevention magic! I've been using for several years and it works great on bolts and castings.

 

Hi 1-2,
Thanks for the info.
I've been trying black oxide which I believe is what 'gun bluing' is.
In fact the last container of oxide I bought was through a gun maker's site.
I'm having trouble getting the 'fade' that the heat zone displays. Ed was good enough to explain why and how that happens and send me to a metal worker's site for some metal 'stain'.
I haven't gone back to the drive shaft yet because I started doing some more zinc and copy cad and will continue with that for a few days more.
Then I'll play with the black oxide again.
Do you have any pictures of the shafts you did? I'd like to see what other people are doing.
Thanks again.
Regards,
Alan

 

I learned to soak the drive-shaft in Evapo-Rust (use a 5' pc of PCV pipe capped at one end) for a day to better observe the paint markings which for duplication during restoration. Here is a before out of evapo-rust and after but have not placed the paint markings on yet. Note the weld joint after removal on this one.

 

Alan or someone, might you know the proper finish for the arch type French locks that go on the rear have shafts. The ones on the donor are rusted to bad to tell.
Thank You
Roger

PS Is the short shaft shine coming from a lathe??

 

Hi 1-2,
Very nice job uncovering those paint stripes and marking.
It's always such a pleasant 'aha!' when something like that turns up.
I'm using pvc too.
I made a simple rig so I could plate the wiper tubes on the wiper arms.
As you can see I put a lot of effort into creating a 'cradle' to hold the tube upright.
Regards,
Alan

 

Great work Alan! As always I'm impressed!
You are correct about when you find those paint markings, its fun! I'm fortunate to have a local small company that does car parts for us in clear zinc, etc., but we do the preparation and all they do is plate. But I'm still interested in doing some of what your doing for things like a wiper transmission linkage.
Chick

 

Hi Chick,
I'm quite unsure just what the original finish was on the transmission bodies themselves. I really think they had a gold finish on them and that's what they have now.
It's a moot point though because I believe the transmissions were in place when the wiper bay was blacked out.
Here's a few pictures of what's in there now. It's always subject to change as I learn more.
Regards,
Alan

 

Sorry, I'm referring to Camaro's and Nova's. I'm restoring a 68Z/28 and linkage colors are much different.

 

Just to clarify Alan! Camaro

 

Palmetto products work well (mentioned earlier) and if you can boil water you can utilize them. As Alan mentioned you need SS or glass but one can also use granite-ware or whatever the camping stuff is called (blue speckled look). By using a hot plate the solution never gets above 180 degrees plus and the optimum is to keep it at 180 to 200 degrees.
Here is a Camaro gas tank strap bolt restored (one to the right) vs. an AMK repro made by Anchor to the left. This is the type of finish I find on many cars and what I aim for but granted their mainly 67 to 69 models. The next picture is of 4 original sub-frame bolts after restoration. Just wanted to show easy results can be obtained with Palmetto products. I then heat and coat the screws/bolts with Rust Prevention Magic which works great.