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I sanded the paint off my Powerbook.

Most of it, anyway.

(Note: I no longer own this machine.)


Raw material: One 500MHz Apple Titanium PowerBook G4, slightly scratched and dented.

Motive: Sick of looking at the scratches and dents, I said: this thing is made of Titanium, why look at paint? Since most of my hardware ends up having that battle-scarred look anyway, and I could see the paint rubbing off on the corners, I decided to go all the way.

Tools: 200- to 600-grit sandpaper; scotchbrite pads; dremel

Method: Crude.

Results: Crude. Yet distinctive.

Many people don't realize that the factory gray of this machine is paint, not raw titanium. (There are some good reasons for this -- unfinished titanium readily shows scratches and fingerprints.) There are actually at least four metals used in the external parts of the Titanium G4. The bottom skin, the surface around the keyboard, and the housing for the LCD are titanium. The flap covering the ports in back is steel, so that it can be held shut magnetically. The pencil-diameter hinge at the bottom of the LCD is aluminum. And the two small hinge covers are cast magnesium. The battery compartment cover is plastic. The light-colored frame is plastic on early models (like mine), and metal on later models (I'm not sure what the transition point was, though -- email me if you know).

pb_back.t.jpg pb_top.t.jpg
pb_surface.t.jpg pb_bottom.t.jpg

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