About a year ago I stripped the coating off of my Izula beacuse it was getting wore out and I use it for food prep and didn't want to think about what kind of bacterial goodies could hide in the coating material since it was really pourous. Anyway I decided that instead of forcing a patina I would just let one form naturally. I started out with a 320 grit finish, quite bright and shiny.
This was after a month
6 Months
1 Year
The pictures aren't the best, but in case you were wondering, you're right that it doesn't really darken up very much between 6 months and 1 year. Mostly the patina just changes here and there depending on what part of it was exposed to what.
Anyway I don't know what my point is... I guess this is what a 1 year natural patina can look like on 1095 steel. All I did was keep it dry and clean. There's been some slight surface rust issues when I didn't get it quite as dry as I thought before resheathing it, but that rust pretty much rubbed right off.
I still use it for food preparation all the time. It's great for dicing up chicken breasts, and it's interesting to see the blue hue devellop to the patina after that. It doesn't impart any flavor onto the food and I've peeled apples and oranges, cut up chicken, steak, etc. Even used it to dice tomatoes for custom pizza sauce that everyone loved.
I didn't really see any big difference over a forced patina except that it's kind of fun to watch it change gradually over time. Especially beacuse in the initial stages, your finger acids will kind of leave tarnish marks and you can see where you hold the blade at, etc. I think the real advantage to forcing a patina is to get it done with, like for appearance sake if you wanted it to get there already or something.
The only difference between this and a forced patina I saw is that forced patinas tend to leave behind a layer of "weak" oxidation that gets rubbed off. So say you go and give it a vinegar bath, and it comes out with a very nice dark patina. If you go and you run that blade through styrofoam or foam rubber or something with a lot of friction, you'll notice it comes out looking a lot lighter than before. That's beacuse a lot of that black was just weak oxidation. So then you have to reapply the patina, rub it off again, etc. You're basically just doing a sped up version of a natural patina.
I don't think it really helps prevent rust, but it might make it easier to take off the metal. The more spots that have an oxidized layer on them, the less spots than the iron oxide will be able to form on. Microscopically there's still plenty of sites so you'll still see rust form, but it's as easy to rub off as getting a pencil eraser and just wiping over it.
This was after a month
6 Months
1 Year
The pictures aren't the best, but in case you were wondering, you're right that it doesn't really darken up very much between 6 months and 1 year. Mostly the patina just changes here and there depending on what part of it was exposed to what.
Anyway I don't know what my point is... I guess this is what a 1 year natural patina can look like on 1095 steel. All I did was keep it dry and clean. There's been some slight surface rust issues when I didn't get it quite as dry as I thought before resheathing it, but that rust pretty much rubbed right off.
I still use it for food preparation all the time. It's great for dicing up chicken breasts, and it's interesting to see the blue hue devellop to the patina after that. It doesn't impart any flavor onto the food and I've peeled apples and oranges, cut up chicken, steak, etc. Even used it to dice tomatoes for custom pizza sauce that everyone loved.
I didn't really see any big difference over a forced patina except that it's kind of fun to watch it change gradually over time. Especially beacuse in the initial stages, your finger acids will kind of leave tarnish marks and you can see where you hold the blade at, etc. I think the real advantage to forcing a patina is to get it done with, like for appearance sake if you wanted it to get there already or something.
The only difference between this and a forced patina I saw is that forced patinas tend to leave behind a layer of "weak" oxidation that gets rubbed off. So say you go and give it a vinegar bath, and it comes out with a very nice dark patina. If you go and you run that blade through styrofoam or foam rubber or something with a lot of friction, you'll notice it comes out looking a lot lighter than before. That's beacuse a lot of that black was just weak oxidation. So then you have to reapply the patina, rub it off again, etc. You're basically just doing a sped up version of a natural patina.
I don't think it really helps prevent rust, but it might make it easier to take off the metal. The more spots that have an oxidized layer on them, the less spots than the iron oxide will be able to form on. Microscopically there's still plenty of sites so you'll still see rust form, but it's as easy to rub off as getting a pencil eraser and just wiping over it.