Carbon steel blade etching

T

Technohedge

Joined
Sep 9, 2018
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Greetings again guys and gals, Hope you are all well!

Im about to heat treat a new projetc 1095 steel, and had a couple of questions:

1/ best method of etching the blade post finishing? My chefs knife is all patchy from cutting various acidic stuff and previous attempts to etch with lemon juice or vinegar still created patchy regions

2/ Interested in creating a Hamon (for aesthetics) but i have no clay to cover the spine during heat treat/quench (and i cannot buy any due to lockdown in NZ) is there another method i may be able to use to insulate the back of the blade from the quench?

Thanks
 
Most etched will come off in wear areas during use.

Etching can be done with most any acid. Ferric Chloride is the most common one. Use it at 4:1 water to FC ratio dilution from the stock strength ( 42° Baume). For etching a hamon, use it at 15:1 ratio.
Vinegar. mustard, and lemon juice all will work.
The first thing is to sand the blade surface completely clean and not touch it with your fingers before or during the etch. Also, and areas of decarb you didn't grind/sand away after HT will show up as blotches in the etch.

Nitric acid and hydrochloric acid (Muriatic acid) can be used in higher dilution. Dilution can range from 30:1 to 100:1, depending on the etch desired. The etch is more gray than black.

Satanite or any refractory coating will work fine for the clay wash. It does not need ( and shouldn't be) very thick. Almost any hardware store has something that will work.

If you want to experiment with things that can be used for a hamon, try any white water color paint or other thing that contains titanium dioxide. Mix it with some sort of chalky local clay (yellow or gray) and a little borax.
If you know a potter, you can use potters clay or ceramic slip. I suppose you could pulverize an old terracotta clay pot and make your own HT clay from the powder ( maybe add a little borax for a binder).
 
Hi everyone, new member here !

I have started nickel plating my forged blades, mainly because people usually can't take proper care of the bare carbon steel during use, and blades rust... Using simple method with low electricity/amp and home made nickel solution, with a little polishing with 2000grit wet/dry paper, you can't tell there's a nickel surface making blades almost rust free during use, only the stoned edge is bare steel. I have not measured the thickness of plating, but it is very thin...

My question to You out there is if anyone has tried this plating on W-1 / W-2 blades with clay coated / hamon finish, and if the hamon lines are visible through plating ?
Asking since there's a lot of work polishing for a great looking hamon, and a waste of it if hamon disappears with the plating...!
 
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Plating is not very popular on knives. It will wear away on trhe edge with sharpening.
If you plated a blade with a hamon it wuld be covered.
 
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