Blade coatings

U

Uncle Bob

Joined
Nov 10, 2001
Messages
60
Hello all,
I have an old Spec Plus from Ontario that I use as a camp knife. As you probably know the finish isnt great on the blades (Looks like hard black paint) and after a couple of years it looks awful. Is there a DIY coating to protect the blade steel and a quick way of getting the old black stuff off (Paint Stripper?)

Cheers

Bob
 
It basically is hard black paint. It is black epoxy powder coat. I don't know if paint thinner will do the job, but there are products on the market that will. Check out PC-47-L. The only coating I would personally put on a blade is Boron Carbide. I am not sure what Bodycote would charge to do your knife, but it might be more than the knife is worth. I do not know of any do it yourself coating that would be any better quality than what the one you have now.
 
Cheers!

As it is a cheapo and I dont use it that much but I hate to see rust anywhere near my stuff (Was put on a charge once for having a nanometer of rush in the flash suppressor of my SA80 once) and since have been super anal about it.

Hmmm.. How about some blueing for firearms, arn't there any quick, if not pleasing to the eye types around?

Bob
 
oops, messed up and posted the above accidentally,

anyway...uncle bob, why don't you check out www.brownells.com. Brownell's is a premier gunsmithing supply site and they sell a number of easily applied coatings. you could check out their cold bluing solutions or they sell a line of bake on epoxy and moly coat paints that you can bake in your own oven. i've used the bake on paints and they work pretty good. they're probably not much tougher than the coating you have, but at least you can "freshen up" the coating whenever you feel like it. if you do go to their site, check out their "tips" section (i think that's what it was called). they have quick tips and directions to get the best results from a many of their products...i know they have one about the bake on moly coat.

have fun,
e.

ps. the bake on paints come in several different colors, so if you wanted to you could have fun with colors and/or patterns other than just plain black.
 
Thanks!

The finish at the moment is horrible. There are great scratches in it (Digging in stony earth) and it looks a mess. I was thinking of stripping it and then polishing the blade with a ultra fine paper then blueing it. Not perfect (Perfect would be the SOG Bowie :) bit what can you do;)

Thanks for the link, that looks like what I wanted.

Cheers

Bob
 
uncle bob,
do you know anybody who has sand or bead blasting rig? if so you might consider blasting the blade then bluing it...it looks pretty good (it's a fairly common alternative to parkerizing for a matte gun finish) and it might help hide some of the flaws in the bluing. cold bluing is generally seen as inferior to hot or caustic bluing for a couple of reasons. 1. cold bluing is not quite asdurable, although some of the newer brownell's formulas are supposed to be getting much tougher (44/40 and Oxpho-Blue are highly rated). 2. because you have to swab the bluing onto the metal (rather than dunk the whole piece into a hot solution), cold bluing usually has visible "waves" in the finish...that's why gunsmiths usually only use cold blue for touch up on small areas. i've heard that if you apply several coats and polish between coats you can get pretty decent results with the better cold bluing solutions...obviously some experimentation or surfing of some gunsmithing forums might help you get better results.

hope this helps.
e.

ps. there's one minor thing i've noticed about cold bluing that you might want to be aware of...most of the solutions i've had experience with stink...normally stinky chemicals aren't uncommon, but cold bluing seems to stay stinky for quite awhile after the finish is completed. i have a cold blued tomahawk that i can still smell after almost a year. maybe i'm just over senstive, but i figured might want to be aware of it if you plan to use your knife while hunting. also i don't have experience with every solution, so maybe the better brownells solutions won't have this quirk.
 
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