Am I the only one that doesn't like blade coatings?

Cougar,
Thanks for info. If water gets in from scratched steel, won't that problem happen to all knives, though? I mean its "internal", so you can't get to anyways, or am I misunderstanding?

BTW, all you bleepy-beeps have me scared now. So tomorrow I'm sure I'm going to be "testing" that knife in weird ways (it HAS been my field knife for several years). If it breaks off and pokes my eye out, I promise not to tell my wife who got me wondering if that black blade is rusty-red underneath (as she is driving me to the ER).
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Glenmore

Remember: Its all fun and games until someone puts an eye out.
 
If I wanted to remove the powder coating and re-coat the blade of my Buck, how would I go about doing that? Is it possible?
 
A scratch in an uncoated blade can rust just as the rest of the blade can rust....
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The fear many people have is that a scratch will rust and the rust will spread under the coating and they won't be aware of it. Apparently it does not occur to these people that they'll see the rusted scratch and know the blade has begun to rust and deal with it....

The appropriate thing to do with a rusted scratch is to clean the rust out of it (scraping is probably the best way, just scrape it down to bright steel) and treat the blade with your oil or grease or high-tech rust protectant of choice. Thereafter you will have to give it the same care as an uncoated knife or the scratch will rust again.

You have to give the edge the same care as you'd give an uncoated knife anyway; the coating doesn't cover the edge. Coatings, therefore, protect your knife primarily from cosmetic corrosion. (It's conceivable you might not look at the knife for a long time and the edge would get badly corroded but nothing else if there are no scratches in the coating. Then you could easily repair the damage just by resharpening. An uncoated knife might acquire more than cosmetic damage to the entire blade if neglected long enough.) The cosmetic attractions of a coated blade after the coating gets scratched up are a matter of taste, I suppose....

-Cougar Allen :{)
 
Now I see I didn't really answer icarian's question yet.

Water doesn't get between the coating and the steel; it might be able to do that with latex paint but not with the blade coatings in common use. Rust spreads from a scratch in all directions; it'll get wider as fast as it gets deeper. If the blade is coated that coating can remain intact next to the scratch even after the steel has rusted away under it, so the rusted area is wider than the visible rusted scratch. There's always some rust visible, though. You might have to look close to see it even after it's grown big enough to see without looking particularly close if part of it weren't concealed by the coating, but if you look at any scratches and you don't see any rust there isn't any rust.

We often find rust on a car that doesn't look very extensive at first glance but when we start dealing with it we find it has spread a considerable distance under the paint. That happens because we don't maintain our car bodies with the kind of care we give our knives -- we let them go for years and then finally notice there's some rust visible and start investigating, and by that time.... The same kind of thing could happen to a coated knife with a scratch in the blade if you leave it somewhere damp for a year, especially if you only oiled it with a makeshift like WD-40 or didn't oil it at all. With any kind of regular use, though -- you look at your knife when you use it. If you inspected your car for rust once a week, looking underneath and in the fender wells and everywhere, and dealt with rust as soon as it started, you could keep that car forever, just keep rebuilding the engine every time it wears out.

-Cougar Allen :{)
 
Disco Stu: You can get a suitable bake-on paint from www.brownells.com and remove the blade from the handle, paint it, and bake it in your oven. I think Buck will do it for you for a very small charge, though, ask at the Buck forum at this website.

If anybody wants to do that with a real knife instead of one of those newfangled trick knives that bend in the middle, you could have a problem. You must remove the handle before baking the paint. Non-bake-on paints don't have enough abrasion resistance for a blade; they'll scratch the first time you use it. AFAIK there are no handle materials that can take that much heat for that long (except metal, of course). If you can remove and replace the handle the rest is easy enough.

The paint bakes at too low a temperature to affect the heat-treat; don't worry about that.

-Cougar Allen :{)
 
Icarian,
I should have defined the term "coating". Something like wax or TUFF-CLOTH is totally acceptable to me. Blueing is great. The types of coatings I don't like are those baked on dipped kind that give water a place to go. Especially salt water.

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If a man can keep alert and imaginative, an error is a possibility, a chance at something new; to him, wandering and wondering are a part of the same process. He is most mistaken, most in error, whenever he quits exploring.

William Least Heat Moon
 
I used to be in favor of the blade coatings, partly because I was not as well informed overall about these things and partly because I am paranoid about corossion(Ahhh corrosiphobia
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).
I have since moved more towards satin finish and I love the stonewash look ala Chris Reeve and REKAT. The only coating I rely on now is the Marine Tuf-cloth (weekly treatment) and the "Raceday" for the pivots.

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The bible is not such a book a man would write if he could, or could write if he would.

*Lewis S. Chafer

2 Tim 3:16
 
I am not generally in favor of any coating other than a tough cloth or the like. Most coatings to subdue the shine are only necessary for some military operations. In my support unit I could have walked around all day with a polished blade because we couldn't hide much of what we did anyway--huge heat signatures, etc. Special Forces, Rangers, LRRP's, or even infantry on a non-mechanized patrol don't want to reflect light back to the enemy (they also practice noise discipline, i.e. reduced vocal commands and noise from personal equipment--if you hunt, just as you leave your truck, jump up and down a couple of times and see how much noise your equipment makes--the deer hear it too!). But armor, artillary, and support troops have less to fear from a non-subdued blade (although many commanders still insist on painting everything that shines--and I don't blame them--it's their football and they can kick it any way they want.)
 
surprise: i dislike coatings, too!

so why do mfrs still use coatings?! do knife users who are not "aficionados" like them? is it the wal-mart "tactical" look?

glen
 
I usually buy knives with a coating that I intend to work hard, I know they are going to look like crap so I dont care
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The knives for my collection I tend to buy in Satin finish, just because it looks great.

St.James:

that Nimravus is beautiful, I might have to get him to do one for me
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Dark Nemesis

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All the knives in the world go round and round, round and round, round and round...DAMN, one of them took my wallet !!! :)
 
That's an interesting idea. Lacquer should adhere well to a blued surface, and that wouldn't be too hard for a user to renew himself, either.

-Cougar Allen :{)
 
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