what kind of material can i use for my liner lock my blade will be 440c SS i wanted the liners to be brass also how do i make the liner "springy" thx:evil

You're gonna have a real hard time making brass springy enough to use for a liner lock. It will also wear quickly, leading to blade play. My suggestion is to use titanium and anodize to get a brass or yellow color, or use stainless and heat color to a yellow color.

Jamey I was wondering how do you heat color stainless to a blue or as you said a yellow. I use 440-C stainless and would love to get a blue or tourquoise or off color red.

Chuck

I've never heat colored anything myself, but have heard of it being done. Do a search for "heat coloring" and see what pops up. (For all I know, those colors may not be acheivable with stainless!)

Ti with anodizing would be the key.
If you go that way, e-mail me and I can do the anodizing for you.

The problem with the heat color is that you will endup screwing it up 5 or 6 times before you get it the right color, and then anything over the size of 2 or 3 inches and you will have serious consistancy problems.

Heat coloring is easy, but its not consistant. At least not by me:)

I don't think you can get anything but shades of gold when heat coloring stainless - ranging from light straw to darker bronze tones. Consistency of colors are easily obtained with a torch, or better, an oven to about 500 - 550 degrees.
Attractive, rainbow colors can be easily obtained on titanium with a torch, but, as far as my experimentation goes, anodizing is necessary for consistency with Ti.
The next time I heat up my nitre salts, I'll see what affect they have on Ti, and report back if it looks worthwhile.