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Rough Titanium Gold pole
I have a titanium gold pole I got in April. Last month I went out to my room to practice and noticed the pole was very "rough". Looked like a build up of stuff on the pole. I tried wiping it down with alcohol but it is still "rough". It is even "rough" at the very top and bottom of the pole. I rarely even touch the bottom. When I wipe down the pole there is a gold/brown color on the rag. Can titanium gold poles rust? Could I be wiping the titanium gold off? My next step is to get a steam cleaner to see if that helps, but the fact that this "roughness" on on my entire pole(even areas I don't touch) worries me. By the way, my pole is in a room detached from the house, it is not in a temperature controlled environment ( unless I am poling).
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2 Replies
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This happened to my chrome xpole 2 years ago. I'm pretty sure it is a little rust. After wiping it with alcohol several times, using it very frequently, and keeping it in a somewhat temp-controlled environment it did fade eventually and feels back to normal.
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Yes titanium poles can rust in the presence of moisture. They are a steel pole plated with nickel/chrome and the gold colour is a very thin layer (less than 5 micron) of titanium nitride (TiN). It is the same as used on many engineering cutting tools as a wear resistant coating. Although this gives corrosion protection there are often micropores that allow moisture to contact the underlying steel and corrode it. As rust expands it pushes away the plating around it (in tiny spots) which is why the surface feels rough feels rough. The only way really to prevent this is to keep the poles in a dry environment and protected from extreme temperature changes eg after a cold night if the day heats up quickly metal objects get covered in moisture for a while. I always keep my steel poles in the house, only the stainless steel or brass ones are allowed to stay in an outbuilding overnight.
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