- Joined
- Apr 27, 2011
- Messages
- 3,201
First off, here's the final product:
Last weekend Wife cut me loose to spend 2 1/2 days at our place in the mountains. I brought a whole bunch of bladed projects to work on, but the one that came out best and that I'm the most thrilled about was my BK11.
As someone who is very much into history and loves the color and texture of historical artifacts, I'd had it in my mind for a long time to 'brown up' some of my blades. My BK11 got selected as one of the ones getting this treatment, and ended up being the one with the most steps that took the most work, but is also the only one that really got satisfactorily complete that weekend.
I had already ordered one of Nick's custom scout sheaths, and had been using it (I bought the B11 as my 'work field' knife because I needed something indestructible). Here's a shot of it heading off to a substation in central AZ.
Here's the workbench where I spent many hours (80% of them trying to sand the grind marks out of my Warthog, snerk
).
First off, I had to strip the coating. I've got this spray-on stuff made by Kleen Kote that I've used on four or five blades and generally it works really well.
Now as you can see it didn't get the BK11 completely stripped, so I had to sand the rest off which was no big deal. I wanted to leave the coating on under the handle wrap so I applied the stripper with a brush near the lines I marked and then used sandpaper wrapped around a paint stick to get the last little bit. This worked great although it was quite a bit of effort.
Once she was sanded then it was time to etch my Beckerhead number into the blade. I bought the PCB etchant from Radio Shack and applied it using a glass pickle jar (btw if Flexxx ever asks you if you want pickle bread, SAY NO. PM me for the reason). Protip: you can reuse the etchant so pour it back in the bottle when you're done. Anyway, I spraypainted the blade, and when the paint was still tacky used a dull pencil to draw the design on.
In reading a lot of etching threads, everyone talked about how they had all this hassle printing out designs and then taping them onto the surface to be etched. I figured nuts to that, I'll just draw a design on. The only drawback? The design looks like it was drawn on by a drunk five year old riding a roller coaster. You should see the one on my tomahawk, it's even worse!
The next step was some decorative etching using a totally different technique; cold blue/bleach. I had first tested it out on a cheap machete:
and then did it on my Warthog. The results were terrible! I had totally immersed the blade, and etching appeared in all kinds of places where I hadn't put the blueing. So when it came time to do the BK11 I figured I wouldn't risk etching the edge so I came up with a rig to keep it edge-up and only immerse the backside.
This turned out to be a good idea because again the etch traveled into all kinds of weird places despite the fact that I used fresh bleach and waited for the blueing to dry before I immersed the knife. But in this case it made a kind of lightning bolt thing that I kinda liked.
BTW I dunked the knife in a bucket of water after I took it out of the bleach and worked on it with 0000 steel wool. NOTE that the blue/bleach technique releases a lot of poison gases so I did this outside. Not that I'm any stranger to poison gases, seeing how much I like Mexican food.
Next up was the patina. I used Birchwood Casey Plum brown, which required heating the knife to 275F in the oven and then wiping the fluid on over and over until the knife was cool. Wife wasn't there so into the oven she went.
The patina really made the logo fade in clarity. In fact, in some light it looks like BH#10 instead of BH#104, and honestly I think it'd be easier to kill Beckerhead #10 and assume his identity instead of buying another BK11 and doing all this again. It'd definitely be cheaper.
The blade was done! Now for the handle wrap.
First up came rough leather 'scales' to beef up the grip (I have big hands so I really benefit from a grippier handle on this little guy). My KA-BAR Phat Bob folder, which I don't think I've mentioned yet that I kinda love, was the perfect thing for cutting and beveling the leather. Protip: need some leather for a project like these handles or a strop? Buy a cheap belt from a thrift store.
At some point in all this I had dyed some hemp string and hung it up in a tree to dry.
Back before I had started to work on the knife at all I did a bunch of experimenting with the wrap to [a] see if it was feasible, and decide on what style I would use. Thank god I did this before everything was dyed and epoxied and drying fast. I spent a considerable amount of time (weeks) just visualizing all these mods before I actually got around to doing them, and there was so much stuff that immediately went in a different direction than I thought once I got to work.
Note that I was sure to leave the bottle-opener end unwrapped... I'd already worn the coating off and I'd only had it for like a week, heh.
I dyed the leather too, epoxied it to the knife, epoxied one end of the hemp in place, and waited for that stage to dry. Once it did, then I did the wrap, epoxied the end in place, then smeared epoxy over the whole handle and worked it in.
After that I made a little quick lanyard with leftover dyed hemp, let it all dry, then I was done!
I'm really happy with it and couldn't wait to take it out and use it, so I did. That'll be my next post
I wanted to note that I think it's really damn cool that BF mod and genius custom knife maker Rick Marchand is very generous with his advice on knife making techniques; posts of his on etching and hemp wrapping were incredibly important in my learning how to do the mods above.
Hope you enjoyed the photos. Thanks for reading and if you have any questions on the mods or need any help feel free to ask.
Last weekend Wife cut me loose to spend 2 1/2 days at our place in the mountains. I brought a whole bunch of bladed projects to work on, but the one that came out best and that I'm the most thrilled about was my BK11.
As someone who is very much into history and loves the color and texture of historical artifacts, I'd had it in my mind for a long time to 'brown up' some of my blades. My BK11 got selected as one of the ones getting this treatment, and ended up being the one with the most steps that took the most work, but is also the only one that really got satisfactorily complete that weekend.
I had already ordered one of Nick's custom scout sheaths, and had been using it (I bought the B11 as my 'work field' knife because I needed something indestructible). Here's a shot of it heading off to a substation in central AZ.
Here's the workbench where I spent many hours (80% of them trying to sand the grind marks out of my Warthog, snerk
).
First off, I had to strip the coating. I've got this spray-on stuff made by Kleen Kote that I've used on four or five blades and generally it works really well.
Now as you can see it didn't get the BK11 completely stripped, so I had to sand the rest off which was no big deal. I wanted to leave the coating on under the handle wrap so I applied the stripper with a brush near the lines I marked and then used sandpaper wrapped around a paint stick to get the last little bit. This worked great although it was quite a bit of effort.
Once she was sanded then it was time to etch my Beckerhead number into the blade. I bought the PCB etchant from Radio Shack and applied it using a glass pickle jar (btw if Flexxx ever asks you if you want pickle bread, SAY NO. PM me for the reason). Protip: you can reuse the etchant so pour it back in the bottle when you're done. Anyway, I spraypainted the blade, and when the paint was still tacky used a dull pencil to draw the design on.
In reading a lot of etching threads, everyone talked about how they had all this hassle printing out designs and then taping them onto the surface to be etched. I figured nuts to that, I'll just draw a design on. The only drawback? The design looks like it was drawn on by a drunk five year old riding a roller coaster. You should see the one on my tomahawk, it's even worse!
The next step was some decorative etching using a totally different technique; cold blue/bleach. I had first tested it out on a cheap machete:
and then did it on my Warthog. The results were terrible! I had totally immersed the blade, and etching appeared in all kinds of places where I hadn't put the blueing. So when it came time to do the BK11 I figured I wouldn't risk etching the edge so I came up with a rig to keep it edge-up and only immerse the backside.
This turned out to be a good idea because again the etch traveled into all kinds of weird places despite the fact that I used fresh bleach and waited for the blueing to dry before I immersed the knife. But in this case it made a kind of lightning bolt thing that I kinda liked.
BTW I dunked the knife in a bucket of water after I took it out of the bleach and worked on it with 0000 steel wool. NOTE that the blue/bleach technique releases a lot of poison gases so I did this outside. Not that I'm any stranger to poison gases, seeing how much I like Mexican food.
Next up was the patina. I used Birchwood Casey Plum brown, which required heating the knife to 275F in the oven and then wiping the fluid on over and over until the knife was cool. Wife wasn't there so into the oven she went.
The patina really made the logo fade in clarity. In fact, in some light it looks like BH#10 instead of BH#104, and honestly I think it'd be easier to kill Beckerhead #10 and assume his identity instead of buying another BK11 and doing all this again. It'd definitely be cheaper.
The blade was done! Now for the handle wrap.
First up came rough leather 'scales' to beef up the grip (I have big hands so I really benefit from a grippier handle on this little guy). My KA-BAR Phat Bob folder, which I don't think I've mentioned yet that I kinda love, was the perfect thing for cutting and beveling the leather. Protip: need some leather for a project like these handles or a strop? Buy a cheap belt from a thrift store.
At some point in all this I had dyed some hemp string and hung it up in a tree to dry.
Back before I had started to work on the knife at all I did a bunch of experimenting with the wrap to [a] see if it was feasible, and decide on what style I would use. Thank god I did this before everything was dyed and epoxied and drying fast. I spent a considerable amount of time (weeks) just visualizing all these mods before I actually got around to doing them, and there was so much stuff that immediately went in a different direction than I thought once I got to work.
Note that I was sure to leave the bottle-opener end unwrapped... I'd already worn the coating off and I'd only had it for like a week, heh.
I dyed the leather too, epoxied it to the knife, epoxied one end of the hemp in place, and waited for that stage to dry. Once it did, then I did the wrap, epoxied the end in place, then smeared epoxy over the whole handle and worked it in.
After that I made a little quick lanyard with leftover dyed hemp, let it all dry, then I was done!
I'm really happy with it and couldn't wait to take it out and use it, so I did. That'll be my next post
I wanted to note that I think it's really damn cool that BF mod and genius custom knife maker Rick Marchand is very generous with his advice on knife making techniques; posts of his on etching and hemp wrapping were incredibly important in my learning how to do the mods above.
Hope you enjoyed the photos. Thanks for reading and if you have any questions on the mods or need any help feel free to ask.
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Too bad he's taking a break. I EDC my 14 every day just about, and I'm using the stock sheath with TDI IWB clip. I want that sheath instead. 
