Another San Mai finishing question

weo

weo

Basic Member
Joined
Sep 21, 2014
Messages
3,098
Hello all. I'm about to complete a cheese knife for my brother, and this one is a San Mai pattern with O1/15N20.
I've read the other San Mai threads (most recently the San Mai by Hand thread) and did 4 separate etches with neutralizing and cleaning the oxides off with a sponge and here's what I'm getting:
n05PWOr.jpg

4qNDIYz.jpg

I'm wondering how to go about getting a darker contrast with the O1 as the high manganese content should make it almost black, right?
Thanks

as always
peace and love
billyO
 
How many etches did you do?
How fresh is your ferric chloride?
I had to recently replace my ferric and it made a huge difference in how dark the steel etched.
 
Thanks Josh, I did 4 or 5 etches (heck, I can't remember now, that was this morning).
But I'm not sure that's it. Each time I took the blade out of the acid, it was almost completely black, but when I used the sponge to clean the oxides off the 15N20, this is what I ended up with pretty much after each time in the acid.

I've decided to give it an overnight dunk in my coffee etch, we'll see what that does tomorrow.
 
On another post, Salem said he used coffee. Maybe he will go into detail as to how he uses the coffee. Is it heated, how long is the blade left in, is the blade rubbed with steel wool? Etc.
 
I just checked how it looks after 3 hours in the coffee. It looks good to me, and I would rake pics, but just found out that my phone (camera) just died... I'll try to get some up tomorrow when I get it replaced.
 
Coffee is a good way to go all right. I work in ss/carbon san mai, so good contrast is pretty easy there, as the stainless cladding does not etch much.
 
Salem, do you heat the coffee? How long do you leave the blade in? Do you do anything to the blade after taking out of the coffee?
 
Tom, I mix the coffee up hot, but use it cold. It can be used either hot or cold, and it acts faster hot, but a cold treatment of 2-4 hours works well for me. It's possible to overdo it, creating a blurred look and leaving brown tints, which happens faster when hot. After coffee I water rinse, then warm the blade a bit and rub on mineral oil for kitchen knives, or turbine oil for non-kitchen knives. The black should not rub off much or at all when oiling the blade.
 
Here's what I did last night, after a 3-ish hour bath in cold coffee.

QALQoWl.jpg

oMsALEL.jpg

Salem Straub said:
It's possible to overdo it, creating a blurred look and leaving brown tints,
Click to expand...
After seeing this, I'm glad I didn't do the overnight bath like I mentioned.
Now to get a handle and an edge on it, oil the blade with some of my camelia oil, and it's ready for mu brother.
 
Thanks Salem!

Here's the almost finished product. Just need to finish the edge on the water stones. Handle is another one of my K&G maple burl from my tree.
BwIfIvM.jpg

BwIfIvM.jpg

Jb8vhY9.jpg


Have a safe and happy holiday season all.
~billyO
URL]]
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top