turn4fun
Member
Has anyone heard how well the gunmetal finishes from Berea hold up? Black Titanium, Gold Titanium, Platinum, and Chrome were all considered pretty durable.. Larry
Has anyone heard how well the gunmetal finishes from Berea hold up? Black Titanium, Gold Titanium, Platinum, and Chrome were all considered pretty durable.. Larry
That would be because they are probably not being done. If they are it would be for internal Quality Control purposes and we wouldn't hear about it.Has anyone heard how well the gunmetal finishes from Berea hold up? Black Titanium, Gold Titanium, Platinum, and Chrome were all considered pretty durable.. Larry
Berea introduced gunmetal finishes less than six months ago.
I would answer your question with a more general statement that Berea platings have always had a good "track record".
I would also observe that any "rating" that lumps all manufacturers together is using a flawed scientific method. If there were no difference among manufacturers (subjective case=condition contrary to fact), the results would be meaningful. With different platers using differing techniques and under different "clean" conditions, the manufacturers are NOT a homogeneous universe. Therefore testing SHOULD BE manufacturer specific.
Even more accurate would be to test each product "run". In that case, ALL conditions would vary far less and the results would be far more valid.
I am not aware of any such tests being published.
FWIW,
Ed
Well, if all you are concerned with is wear that is probably a good choice. Black TI is one of the best for wear. On the other hand, Gun Metal is (IMO) prettier. As to one manufacturer making a more durable Gun Metal finish, that isn't likely to happen, durability will depend on the property of the alloy used. The base metal in the gun metal alloy is Nickel with something added to make it dark. It would be more descriptive to call it "Black Nickel".Thanks everyone for your thoughts on gunmetal. The reason I asked the question is because I'm not convinced that I want to sell any pens with gunmetal finish. At this point I try to only sell pens with Ti-gold, Black Ti, Platinum/Rhodium, and chrome. I guess I don't want to sell a pen to anyone and risk having the plating wear through.
On a similar note, I wish more pens kits offered the choice of Ti-gold rather than only being available in upgrade gold, 10k gold or 24k gold. For instance I get an Atrax ballpoints in Ti-gold from Exotic Blanks. I get a Long Click Ballpoint in Ti-gold from Lau-Lau in Hawaii.
I'd rather pay a little more for pen kits in Black-Ti, than get kits in Gunmetal.. even though I like the looks of gunmetal. A few years ago the informal consensus in a few threads on this forum was that Gunmetal wasn't as durable as chrome. I'm still not sure it is. When Berea recently started making many of their kits available in gunmetal, I was hoping they had improved the plating. Like others have said, Berea's platings are above average. I have no doubt that their gunmetal is going to be one of the best available for that particular plating.
I guess the bottom line for me is to only sell pens in platings that I have confidence in. I don't have that confidence in gunmetal yet. I'll probably make a personal everyday pen in Gunmetal and see what happens. Like Smitty said, we probably won't see the results of testing come from our PSI, Berea, or CUSA. Some of these outfits put relative rankings of plating durability in their catalogs. I do wonder where Berea would rank their latest round of gunmetal offerings.. Larry
That surprises me because nickel has much better wear properties than 24K gold.For what i have expereince in the past gun metal is in the same range as 24k gold. If you want a good less expensive alternative to black TI i would go with black chrome wich is again in my experience as durable as black TI.