Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/08/23/zippos-amazing-weird-new-co.html
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It the pictures do it justice, that’s my kind of bling.
Unfortunately I can’t carry a Zippo; the lighter fluid gives me a rash on the thigh of the pocket I carry it in.
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It’s rainbow titanium. I have a knife like that.
When we were looking for new wedding rings we considered it, but wound up with blue-purple anodized titanium rings with a silver and copper mokume-gane inset (which has a coating to protect it from galvanic corrosion).
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The materials science is not anything magical - a number of metals will change colour in this way simply by applying heat.
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Congratulations! It’s a tough thing to beat.
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13 years and counting, here. It’s weird, sometimes I still miss the motions, the ritual, the little details of smoking, or that moment of relaxation. But yeah, better not.
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The colors are cool but so is Zippo’s lifetime guarantee. I found a badly beaten Zippo lighter on the beach when I was a kid, mailed it in, and got a replacement. It came in handy on camping trips.
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Neat. Are their lighters still not very good?*
- This comment brought to you by Harrumph!. Harrumph!: Things Are So Good That Fiddly Shit Like This Is All You Have To Complain About™.
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No use for? Starting a fire is what allowed man to conquer nature. Having a lighter handy in your pack or something is a prudent tool. Though, as much as I love zippos, the fact they dry out with disuse means the plastic ones are what I am more likely to carry.
I left an engraved one at a “friends” house and never got it back. I still have an Armson zippo given to me by paintball manufacturing great, Forest Hatcher.
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Buy several for your stoner friends, Cory.
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It is true that the effect is easier to produce than one might expect; but it’s arguably pretty neat that you can achieve your choice of colors through thin-film interference effects in the oxide layer rather than conventional pigments.
(In the case of titanium, it’s also pretty neat that you can just change the voltage used when anodizing in order to select an oxide thickness and tune the resulting color. A lot of technology-indistinguishable-from-witchcraft effects can be coaxed out of thin films and other exotic-surface-treatment optical effects; but this one is atypically easy to control.)
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Why? Hipsters use vaporizers. Artisanal vaporizers. Steampunk too, probably.
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I want one. I don’t smoke and never have but I enjoy lighting things on fire (things like incense and candles mostly)
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Me too! May I suggest:
Nobody wants to smoke weed with Naphthalene lighter fluid. Its a mistake not often repeated. “clean” burning butane is the smokers friend.
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According to Aleister Crowley’s definition, “the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will” the materials science used here is precisely magic.
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Ditto.
I’ve got a Zippo; used it for a few weeks, then got sick of having to constantly refill the thing. They dry out ridiculously quickly.
Plastic lighters aren’t infallible, but for the weight of one Zippo (or one flint & steel) I can carry a dozen disposable butane lighters.
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They’re great in a wind; that’s really their use-case.
Try lighting anything with a butane liter if the wind is over, say 10 MPH!
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That’s really cool, and it gets around the concealed carry issues…
I think you mean:
Buy several for your stoner “friends,” Cory.
