Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Zirconium P15 Sign Up Sale!

Hi Everyone,

It's downright chilly this morning here in Massachusetts! It's getting to be time to put away the shorts and break out the light jackets. I always hate to see the summer go but I do enjoy the fall, at least the early part, before that dreadful white stuff arrives. And I wouldn't even mind a short visit of the white stuff except it always wants to overstay it's welcome. 

Today I have some truly exotic P15 Prybabies to offer you. These are made of 702 Zirconium! I was recently offered a small piece of this material so I could not resist trying a few tools with it. We go from 1/4 inch Roid thickness back to 1/8 inch Summer Weight on these but they are still way cool... The strength appears to be just fine for a light duty tool but I would use some common sense before taking a hammer to it or a "cheater" bar.

Zirconium is described in the literature as having a high affinity for oxygen and man oh man, is that ever the truth! Titanium is hardly easy to work with either but this Zr stuff is just plain nasty to grind. It requires very slow speeds and that is why I am so grateful to have a good speed controller on my KMG grinder as I can get it down to a crawl. Pre-milling the large bevel before finish grinding is a must to avoid conflagration. The sparks from titanium are very flammable too but this Zr is downright hazardous. You have to keep an eagle eye on the dust and keep the dust collection bucket flooded with water. But, once you are past that delicate stage it's not so bad with the rest of the finishing steps.

Speaking of finishes, I had a little fun with these...Anyone could have made them dull black by simply heating with a torch and rubbing them with oil. I decided to try a variety of techniques though to see what else I could come up with. Don't ask me to repeat it because I'm not exactly sure at this point what all I did but there were multiple steps involved including heat, electricity, tumbling, blasting and hand rubbing to arrive at what I think are some very unusual and subtle looks ranging from rusty warm browns to light color tones.

The Zirconium P15 Prybabies will run $125 each plus shipping and this is a Sign Up Sale, so one entry per customer please! I have 24 of these.

The SUSale will begin at 2PM eastern time and end one hour later at 3PM at which point I will sort through the entries and then randomly draw the winners. Good luck and as always, thank you so much for stopping by!

Woohoo! Sign up phase is over and I will go through the entries and announce the winners of the drawing shortly. Thanks everyone! :)

Entrant List

Sign Up Sale Rules, Please Read!








 

9 comments:

Unknown said...

And what is the UPSIDE of Zirconium? Any reason to want this besides rarity?

[Christopher Condit]

Peter Atwood said...

You got it, rarity and corrosion resistance. It's in the same general family as titanium on the periodic table and does share some of the characteristics. When was the last time you saw anything made out of it?

Unknown said...

My crown from the dentist last week :P

Wetmore said...

Beautiful!

Unknown said...

Speechless.

Unknown said...

They look fantastic. What an exotic metal fir EDC, fingers crossed :-)

Unknown said...

Only my Zr 5 Flute MEGA...

Michael Gaffney said...

They look amazing, Peter! So sad I didn't win :(

Unknown said...

Wow!
Missed that:(
Metric please!