A thread for homemade blade patina recipes

[Kadnine]

My first try at the "jab it into an onion overnight" trick.

Featured: Ka-Bar Becker Necker and a no-name China made folder blade, both with factory finish sanded off and polished smooth with a little 000 steel wool. Scrubbed clean with soap, hot water, a Scotch-Brite pad and finally degreased with alcohol and a paper towel.

We'll see later today how it turns out. I've experimented in the past with cider vinegar, white vinegar, and boiling white vinegar, but the end result was either too dark to be visually interesting, or too uniform to hide my terrible blade prep. I'm hoping this patterned technique will fix those problems.

Next experiment up for consideration?

Coarse English relish, applyed sparingly with a Q-tip
Cellophane wrap and lemon juice
Possibly overlaid with a vinegar finish

- Keith

[guncrank1]

Ah
1200 years ago Vghninc royal sword smith to Sragon the Crusher descovered that his blades rusted and quickly learned to polish them with pomice stone and sharkskin.

500 years ago Adalian royal armor discover that his Royal Highness's wheel lock rusted up
And he polished that off and it darkened the metal.
That was rust blue
Down the years the art has been perfected and now that is a big money job.

My advice is to put the blades in the bathroom to speed up the process.
If you want just leaves the polished steel in there to natural rust.
I do that for a traditional browning on muzzleloaders.

Most of my formula I have use some type of stronger acid
So my advice s try a stronger acid or increase the humidity.

[guncrank1]

If you would increase the polish to a higher degree
You would get a finier surface and a finer "rust effect"

[86 slo-vo]

I've been wanting to do this for a while.

[Whootsinator]

Izula w/ Patina by ATK195, on Flickr

This was done by painted coarse ground mustard diluted with vinegar onto the blade with a Q-tip, allowing to sit, and then stabbing it into an orange to sit overnight.

By the end of the project I had noticed a few things... The highly polished edge had the best coloration and contrast by far, the orange took much longer than I thought it would, and in the coming summer months that I used this knife every day I found out that this particular forced patina did not protect the blade AT ALL. I wore it every day and it was rusty at the end of every day. The blade needed to be touched up every few days.

Since doing this I've sanded it all back down to look more like a hand-rubbed finish but not to a high polish. With no coating and no patina, it hasn't corroded or dulled with storage at all. Now I DON'T know if what caused the rusting was the daily exposure to sweat and humidity (my summer job is outside all day, no air conditioning 24/7), the patina, or a combination of the two. If I could spend another summer wearing it with its current rubbed finish, I could tell you... but I don't think the drill sergeants at Benning would appreciate my experimenting with blade corrosion resistance at BCT.

[Kadnine]

Good tips guys!

Here's what I came out with:

IMG_20130211_122945.jpg (202.22 KiB) Viewed 1048 times

Not bad, but I'm still experimenting. I'm intrigued by Crank's bathroom idea. Will have to try that. And to Whoot's point about protectorants, yeah, this blade will need still constant care and oiling. That's for sure!

(Oh! And the china blade was a washout. Turned out to be stainless steel and didn't take any color from such a weak acid. I'd be ticked that it was sold me as a carbon steel blade, except that it was free. So... not much to complain about.)

- Keith

[guncrank1]

China blades are punched from sheets and then ground.
The stainless is low carbon so there is no heat treatment on them.

As it is known that stainless will rust but it must be forced to
By a caustic and high temperature.

[Kadnine]

I suspected that it was black paint on stainless. But figured it was worth a shot. I've heard of a heat treatment for stainless that simulates rainbow titanium. I'll try that on the china blade...

- Keith

[guncrank1]

w

I suspected that it was black paint on stainless. But figured it was worth a shot. I've heard of a heat treatment for stainless that simulates rainbow titanium. I'll try that on the china blade...

- Keith

If you want cool color get some reactive metal

http://www.reactivemetals.com/http___ww ... /Home.html

[Kadnine]

w

If you want cool color get some reactive metal

http://www.reactivemetals.com/http___ww ... /Home.html

Nice! I once heat treated a copper bar top that turned out nicely. Finished it with a vinegar/salt solution to green it up some, then floated a urethane coating over it. I took pictures, but that hard drive seized up years ago...

Thanks for the link!

- K

[Wyldman]

Pee on them.

[Kadnine]

Pee on them.

With my liver? No blade would last. Good for sharpening, not etching

- K

[Kadnine]

Here we have an overnight plunge into two lemons by my father's old Amsco USA steel Philips head screw driver from the 50's.

(Shhhhhh... He doesn't know that I kept it... since 1984.) Should it come out interesting, I'll give the handle a stripped paracord sheath wrap and we'll see what happens! I might have to give it back... But... wonder! This has been a powerful driver, that tool.

So I got that going for me. Which is nice.

- Keith

[nemo]

I finally had time to mess with my knife kit I got from Woodcraft ($10). I've been wanting to do a patina on it till I found out it is stainless, you can't force a patina on stainless steel.



YES, you can force a patina on stainless.

[guncrank1]

Pitina also with gun blue
Especially the creame type

[Kadnine]

Looks good, nemo. How'd you do it? I've had zero luck with stainless using the weak acids that work so easily on carbon steel.

- K

[Netto]

I'm thinking i might try to do a forced patina on one of my moras.

The knives look great guys, cool pics.

Supposedly apple cider vinegar will give a carbon steel blade almost a black luster. Saw a couple of videos on it.

Bring the vinegar to a boil, remove from the heat and submerge the knife. I forget how long you leave it in the vinegar.... The more times you submerge it, the darker the blade gets.

I need to find that video.

Sorry if it's already been linked here. I'm on limited data right now and don't have time to read through the entire thread.