#anodized titanium

Scale mail dragon tail commission I just finished. One of the prettiest patterns of colors I’ve had the pleasure of working with.

It’s got a custom pattern of anodized titanium scales in purple, violet, dark blue and teal, and it’s got a stainless steel underbelly. The anodized titanium has to be special-ordered from the manufacturer, and it’s pretty pricey, but it’s worth it. The spade tip’s shape was based on a reference from the commissioner, and it’s 1/8″ birch plywood that I laser-cut and painted with acrylic paint.

It measures in at 34 inches long without the spade tip, and the spade tip adds 4 inches, bringing it to 38 inches total. It weighs 3 pounds 13 ounces.

And here’s the anodized titanium dragon tail I was working on! I was super happy to get a chance to work with this metal again. Getting these takes putting in a special order to the manufacturer, and there’s always variability between batches, but it’s totally worth it. (There was a bit of a snafu getting started with this one because paying taxes had drained my bank account, and I didn’t have the cash to be able to put in the order for the scales until I had finished another commission... Anyway, it eventually worked out.)

This one also has a funky tip, which took rather a while to work out the specific dimensions on. The upper part goes clear through the tail, and the tail is slitted to provide the space for it. Like my normal spade tips, it attaches in to the tail with lobster clasps, so it’s removable. I’m pretty adamant about doing it like that, because I know that the materials I use for the tips will wear down more easily than the metal of the tail, so I want to make sure they can be easily replaced by the owner without needing to ship the whole thing back to me to take apart the chainmail. 

Oh right, this tail also used a different style of spikes than I normally use. These are shaped like eagle claws. I rather like the side view of them, but for some reason they’ve got a strong twist to the side, which I was not a big fan of. The client liked it, though, so that’s fine.

Anodized titanium dragon tail! Wooooo! I love the almost iridescent quality these scales have.

It’s been quite a while since the last time I got to work with these scales. For this commission I custom ordered a batch of them from the manufacturer. This tail uses purple, violet and dark blue anodized titanium scales, plus “Bright” anodized aluminum scales on the underbelly (in red and bronze color). It also uses gold-colored cat claw-shaped spikes. (I had to track down a random amazon supplier for those, since the place I normally get spikes from only does chrome. But nowhere but them seems to have large sizes, so these are all just the small 1-inch ones.)

Did I never post this? It looks like I never posted this.

These are the Tiny sized scales from The Ring Lord. I got a pack or two to experiment with. And man they’re pretty, but man they’re not for me. They take forever. Where the typical bracelets I make take about 2 dozen scales, the same length of tiny scales takes about a hundred scales. And the tiny rings were super tedious to work with.

Basically, for the amount of time it takes to make something with these tiny scales, I don’t think I can sell them at a price that I think someone would pay. Though if I ever end up starting to work with precious metals, I’d use these.