Accidental plating or wash?

J

John L

Joined
Oct 28, 2004
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1,330
A few years ago I accicently ended up with a copper wash(could have been brass colored) on a damascus folder I made. I ground it off and reworked the blade not knowing what was the cause of the wash. Now I want the wash on a project and don't remember how....by accident..I achieved that effect. Anyone know?
 
Copper in your ferric chloride. Stick a brass rod in there for awhile then put the blade in. Ruins the ferric chloride for anything but this.
 
If you re-use FC that has been used to etch mokume, you will get the same result.
Stacy
 
You can also get that by cooling from a tempering in used jewelers pickle (or in my case rinse water that had been used after pickling. Jeweler's pickle is nowadays sodium bisulfate (tradename "Sparex" if you buy it as jeweler's pickle, don't though, sparex is a byproduct of making something else and it has a nasty brown sludge in iy, buy it as a product called"PHDown from pool or hot tub supply stores, same stuff but cleaner and cheaper) it is a powdered buffered acid, and it dissolves copper and copper oxides. It also dissolves forgescale. I drew a differential temper on a knife I made my wife using my jewelry torch, and used my rinse water to cool it and the blade plated bright copper. apparently enough copper saturated pickle had carried over into the rinse water for an electrochemical plating. I was embarrassed, because of course my wife was in her usual spot in the papasan chair in my studio and was eagerly watching her knife being made, and saw the whole thing. I was going to tripoli the copper off, and she insisted I leave it. She loved it. 3 years later the copper has turned blackish with patination, I wish I had waxed the blade, she still loves it!

-Page
 
I have a jug of ferric chloride that has copper in it and I use it sometimes to copper the damascus of a knife. It really sticks to 15n20 and comes right off of 1095. I think it bonds to the nickel. If you use some copper in the guard and handle it is an interesting effect. I use repeated soaks and lightly hit the blade with a scotch brite pad in between soaks till I get to where I want it. Then I buff it LIGHTLY with a cloth buff and a bit of high gloss compound. Jim
 
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