This is the world.
DCF 886.
Threat Level Midnight Triple X Rated Blackout Edition.
And it is extremely rare.
So rare, in fact.
That this might just be the only one in existence.
But don't worry.
Because I am going to tell you exactly how you.
Can get your own.
If you've been watching my channel for a while now,
then you know that the war power tools are pretty much
my main platform of cordless tools, and I have quite a few of them.
It's pretty rare for me to look at.
Other tool companies and think,
Oh, I wish I had that, because they're all pretty much has everything that I need.
However, there is one glaring exception to that statement.
Makita.
Makita makes these really awesome special edition colors of their.
Impact drivers and other tools they do read Purple.
And of course they do a special edition blackout version
that I have just oh, I've always wanted it for so long.
And I've been waiting. For the.
Wall to follow suit in a similar way.
And I've been waiting and I've been waiting
and they are just not doing it.
So today I am taking matters into my own hands.
I went on YouTube and I found these videos of people dying
plastic motorcycle parts and it got me thinking, Hmm,
I wonder if I could do something similar like that with my power tool cases.
So today.
We are going to create our own. Blackout edition.
Power tools.
I'm going to walk you through the process and show you all the pitfalls.
And hopefully by the end of the video
you will be able to make something that looks like this.
With all that being said.
Let's rewind the clock.
And I'm going to throw this video back to me yesterday.
When I first started this project.
All right.
So I think we have everything that we're going to.
Need right here. These are chemicals.
That are some of the things that will actually be using to do the die.
We're going to set those aside for minute.
And we're going to start by.
Disassembling the tools that we want to die.
So I have to do what impact guns here?
And then I also have a little craft and flashlight just because I wanted to see
if there would be any difference in dying between the different colors of plastics.
So let's start by disassembling these guys and getting them prepped and ready
to be done.
So why
die and not some sort of paint product like spray paint?
It's a good question, but I think at the end of the day, it all comes.
Down to durability.
A paint finish is just going to be sitting on top of the tool.
And the nice thing about a dye is that it actually penetrates into the plastic
and dies below the surface.
So if these get. Any scratches or abrasions.
Or anything like that, they're not going to then show through.
To the original. Yellow down below
so that all the screws kind of wants to.
Come apart. Really?
So there's something right here.
But what is this keeping you together?
Oh, it's because I'm an idiot and I.
Forgot a screw.
I will do it every time.
Okay, now.
Now it comes apart much easier.
Look at the inside of this thing.
This is pretty impressive.
It's also extremely. Dirty.
Real quick, I'm just going to take a photo of this thing
and it's disassembled state, so hopefully I can put it back together later.
How do you come apart?
Oh, oh, oh.
Maybe it was just years of grime holding it in place.
That's actually really cool.
That the whole thing is just like one unit that you can just drop right in there.
They actually made this really easy for me.
Well, I'll definitely clean that up.
But first, I'm kind of curious, will this work without a case?
Did you electrocute yourself?
Well, I was trying to use my drill without a case on it.
Yeah, that works.
That's funny.
And I almost forgot.
We also have to.
Disassemble the craftsman.
Or bottom stuff.
They come in a part. No problem.
But up here at the top is still connected somehow.
Yes. The hidden screw.
This is actually a really simple little device.
At the end of the day, not much more than some wires, a switch and an LSD.
All right.
Let's get these guys cleaned up
and then we can move on to the next step for this project build.
I don't know what to call this. In order to give our DI.
The best possible chance of penetrating into this plastic, we.
Are going.
To clean and grease these tools because they have seen a lot of action
over the years and they're looking. Pretty dirty.
So we're just going to. Scrub the crap out. Of them here in the safe.
So these
guys are now just about as clean as they're going to get.
So there's one last little thing I want to do.
Before we actually. Start dying.
Most power tools come covered in warning labels and branding stickers,
which obviously aren't going to die very well.
So I just use a heat gun and a little metal smudging tool
to peel them off and then I'll reattach them later.
You know what?
I actually just realize it's going to look dumb if I don't do the.
Battery. Case as well.
So just give me a second to strip this down and clean it as well.
I've never actually opened one of these up, so be kind of interesting to see what.
The battery case.
Looks like on the inside.
Obviously, standard disclaimer disassembling battery is dangerous,
blah blah blah.
You guys get it? You know what you're doing? You're adults.
You can decide for yourself if it's a good idea or not.
Oh, look at that. Splits right there.
Right there. Beauty.
That's actually really easy. Perfect.
The only yellow piece is its own little thing.
We don't even really have to disassemble the battery that much. Awesome.
All right.
Now on to the man science.
Portion of this. Video.
So there are a few things you. Are going to need, I.
Guess, first and foremost.
You're going to need a. Vessel to work with.
I just got this metal baking sheet tray thing off Amazon.
I think that was about $10.
You are going to need this.
Writ dimer synthetic dye.
That synthetic part is apparently very important.
I was only able to find this in a graphite.
Color which.
Looks pretty close to black, but it might be like.
A really dark gray. So I got two bottles of those.
Those were, I think.
12, 13 bucks. Each.
Keep in mind, that's Canadian.
You're going to need a little bit of acetone.
We'll talk more about what this does in a minute.
And then you are going to need a hot.
Plate or.
Some sort of method.
In order to.
Heat up your dye water. Acetone mixture.
So what we're going to do to start is fill up our vessel.
Slash baking sheet thing with enough water.
So that our parts. Can be fully submerged in it.
And then, you know, maybe a little bit. Of extra margin.
Just you want them to be well in coverage.
So that over time talking to that, in case you can tell,
it should be room temperature water, too, because we're going to add
the acetone in a minute and it can react if the water's a little too hot.
Okay, that's about enough.
And now the next step is going to be adding our dye to the water.
I got two bottles because.
I figure more is.
Probably better than too little.
So this stuff should.
Theoretically be pretty powerful.
So I want to. Be sure that you don't.
Get it.
Oh, that's really cool.
Look, I wish I film this close up.
That is awesome.
Oh, well, next time, right?
What was I saying beforehand?
You probably want to be careful.
And not get this stuff on your clothes because it is made.
For dyeing.
Clothes and now we're going to add or acetone.
So you want to add about seven ounces of acetone.
The ratio of acetone that you use, I guess is something
you kind of had to play around with a little bit.
So we'll see how seven ounces does.
If it's not enough, we'll add a little bit more.
So the idea with the acetone is that it helps to open.
Up the pores, the plastic.
And allow the dye to penetrate into it.
Without the acetone.
You're barely going to get. Any.
Dye transfer at. All.
Oh my God.
If I spill this, it is going to make the world's worst mess in the shop.
So it's going.
To be careful.
Oh, there we go. Now, for the fun part.
You know what?
We are working.
With acetone and we're going to be heating it up. So I
think I should probably.
Put all my respirators.
The stuff is going to get nasty.
And I'll also throw on some. Extractor.
Fans, open all the windows here in the shop.
So do our best to mitigate as many fumes as we possibly can.
So I'm using my little laser thermometer here to measure the temperature
of our concoction, and we're trying to get it up to 200.
Degrees or, you. Know, kind of in that. Range.
Right now we are at 96, so this might take a while,
but you can see it is starting to boil ever so slowly.
Oh no.
Is worried this might happen or vessel of has sprung a leak.
So you see this rivet here that they use to attach the handle?
It's letting out a little bit of our liquid.
Maybe I can pass that with some hot glue.
I don't have a lot of faith that that's going to catch it.
As we approach the 200 mark, this thing has really slowed down.
It's rate of acceleration or whatever.
It's taking a long time to go from 150 to 200.
That's what I'm trying to say.
Also, I'm holding my laser gun sideways because I'm cool.
You know, to be honest, I'm
having a pretty hard time getting this thing up to temperature.
The highest I'm reading right now is like 189.
In the interest of not having this take all day,
I'm just going to kind of go for it at this temperature.
I'll keep the heat on and hopefully it'll keep heating up as things go on.
But yeah, let's, let's put some parts in.
Oh, drop that right in there. Can't even see it anymore
to find space in there.
Sure you got a bigger vessel for.
Oh or and you know this has been boiling for a while.
So just a touch more acetone in case anybody wants a prime
example of why you don't add acetone to the mixture.
After it's already heated.
Here you go.
I was worried that I boiled.
Off too much acetone while I was getting everything up to temperature,
but this was definitely not.
The right way to add more.
If I had to do this.
All over again, I'd probably start with ten or 11.
Ounces of acetone instead of that seven.
Okay, it's been all of like 5 minutes.
3000 might indeed be working.
So you can see on the inside,
oh, there's like an air bubble or something in there,
but the inside of it hasn't changed.
But yeah, that's doing good.
Okay, what about the craftsman?
Work as much as the yellow to wall plastic.
I wonder if they use a different plastic or it's just a different pigment,
but it does seem to be affecting it.
So we're just going to leave that for a little bit longer.
Oh, look at that.
Look at that.
Oh, that is.
Yeah.
Oh, man, I hope I've done this now.
Okay. All right.
Keep it in the tie. Do its thing.
Get back in there,
Sweets.
I can't believe it's working so well.
Hey, it's 10 minutes later.
Let's do a quick update.
Oh, man, the water is taking the dye.
Really well.
Look at that.
That's almost already perfectly black candles.
Check the craftsman.
This is the type of red we started with.
This is a red.
It's definitely going a lot slower on the Craftsman stuff,
I guess, because it started as a darker color.
You know, in the interest of doing as much of this as I can, I'm
going to take the craftsman guys out and put them to the side,
and then I'm going to actually do some other double tools
because the wall plastic just seems to take the dye so much better.
So I took the craftsman shells.
Out and then I strip down a dual DC seven or eight compact drill and added
that to the dye that as you can imagine, I wanted to have a combo.
Drill slash driver set that were both black though
while I waited for the drill shell to start.
Taking with, I decided to get a.
Jumpstart on durability.
Testing those craftsman. Parts.
That seems to be on there pretty good.
I mean, if you scratch deep enough into the plastic, the red is still there.
But you had to go pretty deep in order to get to it.
Yeah.
So like at least like a 16th in there before you start to hit the red
plastic again.
Really interesting.
You know what
I should do my scratch test on the inside I minute you can see here the didn't
quite absorb evenly into the craftsman tool which is kind of interesting.
I wonder why at this point.
The original tool to impact driver had been in the dye
for a little over 2 hours and I figured it was as dark as it.
Was going to get. Are
look how good
that looks.
Okay, let's do a scratch test again here.
So then the dye is in there.
Really?
I have to go at it before you could start to reveal anything.
One thing that I saw while doing.
The research. For this video is that it's a good idea to give.
Whatever you're dying a quick wipe down with pure acetone in order to remove.
Any excess dye that's just sitting on the. Surface.
This helps to give you a much more even finish and helps to prevent any dye.
Transfer from happening later on down the.
Line.
As a final step, I gave the. Parts a good thorough rinse in.
The sink. And then started piecing.
My impact.
Driver back together.
And I realized that.
I missed this tiny little bit of yellow plastic in the LED.
Color, so I just blocked that sharpie.
Then it was time to test and.
Make sure that I put everything back. Together. Right.
All right.
Well, I'm not sure if it's a work.
Sure does.
That I did think about completely blacking out the tools and.
Removing the stickers, but.
I wanted. These tools to look as factory as. Possible.
So I decided to put them back on.
Okay, now let's see how our drill's doing.
Yeah,
that doesn't look for why is this working?
This has been in here for, like, I don't know, hour and a half at this point.
That's disappointing, to say the least.
Despite being slightly disappointed with the subpar results.
I gave the drill shell the same after.
Treatment and then piece it back together along with my craftsman.
The flashlight.
All right.
So time for a little bit of mortem analysis.
Why did this one work so well and then these two.
Didn't work all. That well?
Truth be told, I don't really know.
So I can speculate about a couple of things.
One idea that I had is that maybe the wall switched their.
Manufacturing process at.
A certain point
and started using a different type of plastic with their newer tools.
Because I believe these two. Are.
Significantly newer than this.
This is a DCF 86 and.
It's probably about three or four years old at this point, whereas these are.
Probably made in the last two years.
It's also possible that I just didn't use enough dye and that
this soaked up all the dye early on and didn't leave enough for these two.
But I don't really know about that
because the Craftsman Housing went in at the same time
as this and clearly the impact driver ended up getting a lot darker.
So I don't think that
the only other theory that I had is that maybe a lot of the acetone.
Evaporated.
Early on
and it wasn't able to penetrate into these ones as well as it was this one.
But again, that doesn't really make that much sense
because the Craftsman case was in for just as long as it was.
So yeah, I really think it comes down to slightly different compositions.
Plastic at the end of the day, I don't actually mind the look of this.
I mean, yeah, I set out to make it black and it ended up green, but it's kind of
got like a same look as like the green that you see in camo.
I could see this
actually being a special edition tool that the wolf made at some point.
And same thing with the deep maroon of the craftsman stuff.
I think this actually looks really cool.
What a practicality.
I mean, you guys saw when I scratched away
at the inside of the case on this one, the pigments in there are pretty deep.
So you would really have to mark one of these.
Before you saw the original yellow color showing through.
Another thing that I was worried about.
And I'm actually quite pleased by is like my hands are very clean right now.
I just watched them in the sink and I'm not getting any dye transfer
from the grip.
I was really worried about the rubber grip.
Transferring the dye to my hands, but I have a little bit of rubber on there
now. But yeah, my hands are still clean after handling this.
And now for the big question,
would I recommend that other people do the same project at home?
I mean, yeah, if it's something you're into,
if you think that, you know, investing
an afternoon of your time into dyeing your tools is a good use of your time.
And I think. Go for it.
This is a great way.
To distinguish your tools from other people's tool on a shared job site.
Or if you're.
Just kind of like me and you like modeling things,
I think this is a fun little law that you can do.
I've also kind of hoping that I can use this video
as a way to send a message to the world that they really should be doing.
Special Edition Blacked Out Tools The way Makita is.
So let me know down in the comments if this was actually a product
you could buy on store shelves when you guys buy it.
I know I would.
I would even a small 10 to $15 premium for a special edition black tool.
Oh, and just in case you guys forgot,
this is what we started with and this is where we ended up.
So pretty dramatic difference, I'd say.
Yeah, that's crazy.
I love how this looks.
On that note, I think. We are. Done here.
Thank you so much for watching.
Big, big, big.
Thank you to all my Patreon supporters.
You guys rock.
Really appreciate. The support.
Helps make these videos possible and I will include links
to all the products that I use in the video description.
All right, everybody, that is it for me.
And I will see you guys in the next video piece.