Repairing hard anodization

Well, over the years I have had lights scuffed for many reasons and even HA3 gets damaged over time. Then there is the little affair of the KL1 which I tried to open with vise grip pliers and ended up carving chunks outta the HA.

How would one repair HA-Nat? The beautiful thing about HA-BLACK is that even if you expose the aluminium, there are products that can coat it black again. Nat is a real pain though.

I'm thinking that if all else fails, since I have to disassemble this KL1, I might as well strip it to bare Al, then it would go nicely with my satin gray lights. Or at least be reasonably close to gray, a different shade, rather than being olive green vs silver/gray!

Hard anodizing is a difficult process, it isn't a paint or powder coating like many people think. You have to actually soak the part in acid with electricity flowing through the part. It's far more complicated than that and hard anodizing requires strict low temperature processing and tight current controls. Not something you can easily replicate in your backyard.

If you want to bring it back to a uniform look the only options are paint, powder coat or strip it with oven cleaner and polish it.

My suggestion is you get the light Cerakoted. I really love my orange Cerakoted HDS Clicky !! It's a really hardy coating. It's used to coat firearms, even some of the moveable parts. I think the cost would be around $40 to $50 so the light would have to be worthy

You could always fully disassemble it and send it out to be re anodized.

Thanks for the Cerakote tip. I'll do that when I have something truly special I want to keep


Hmm.... I have been reading up on the various threads about removing anodization. I have a little bit of lye on hand, I might wind up doing that.

The KL1 head splits into three parts, a top assembly and shroud that covers part of the bottom assembly, and a pill in the middle containing all the circuitry. I can remove enough parts from the top and the bottom assemblies, then pop them in the lye. The pill is HA, but completely hidden from view when the light is closed up so I think there's no need to go thru the trouble of removing the guts from the pill.

Pics from someone else who managed to get it open: https://www.candlepowerforums.com/posts/1611883&postcount=74

Maybe send a email to surefire to ask whether they can re-anodize it for you