Hi Lorraine,
It’ll color just fine. (electrically)
As far as reshaping it…probably not. It’s likely one of the harder
alloys (Ti64-AlV at a bet). Not insurmountably hard to mess with,
but it’ll take more than a little convincing. (Imagine hard stainless
steel.) It’ll work harden quickly as well, so you won’t get much
motion out of it.
A jeweler’s saw will cut it, and you can drill through it for
rivets, so ponder what sorts of shapes you can put together by way of
chopping it up and riveting it back together in some new way. To drill
it, run your drill slow (in a drill press) and use lots of lube. Pull
down harder than you normally would, and drill in short cycles. You
want to ‘peck’ at it. Drill hard for a second or two, pull back for 5
seconds, drill hard for another second or two…etc. If you break a
bit in it, fear not. Just mix up a super concentrated batch of
pickle, and dump it in there for an hour or two. It’ll eat the
drillbit without touching the Ti.
Given that it’s been implanted, I’d probably dump it into a
concentrated bleach solution for a bit, then boil it, just to make
sure it doesn’t have anything on it that you don’t want.
For whatever that’s worth,
Brian Meek.