Day 5: Breaking Our Flat Oven

One thing I wanted to try during the project is tempering metal with heat in order to colour it. This is usually done using very high heat; I did some research into the process and one person managed to temper metal to a blue colour using car oil and a gas stove, I, however, only had the oven in my university halls flat that's supposed to go up to 250º.

After polishing the metal, one side with nail polish remover and the other with a medical alcohol wipe (again, I figured these would be close enough) I it in the oven for 1 hour.

After doing so, it had definitely changed colour to a brownish orange with the part polished with nail polish remover having gone slightly blue in the light, but this wasn't the vibrant colour I was looking for. I did try putting it in for longer on the grill section instead of the fan oven and then just on the fan oven again, but abandoned this when the oven started to smell quite bad. I then tried direct heat by using a lighter, this method worked but was also entirely uncontrollable. I will attempt this again at university in our metal workup but it's nice to know it does work at home more or less.