Figured, if I'm gonna keep it... Might as well like how it looks

EZ Bake

EZ Bake

Joined
Mar 5, 2009
Messages
1,752
Started out as a Foliage Green CTS-XHP model.

Don't know if I'm catching the true color (Royal Blue) with my crappy cell phone camera, but I'm too lazy to get out the good camera and try and get some better lighting, so this is all you get:

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Going to be a user now - pretty happy with it overall. Removed the scales, used Royal Blue liquid RIT (because no one in my entire stupid county had the powder in orange -that's what I originally wanted to do) and put them on a couple of wire-coat-hanger make-shift holders and boiled a pot of water with the liquid Dye and some salt. Then set the pot to simmer and put the scales in with the hanger (washed with dish soap first and handled with rubber gloves to prevent oils from coming into contact with the scales). Rinsed afterward and oiled with some CLP Break-Free (because it's what I had handy), and it looked pretty darn good (I think - at least for my first time). About 1 hour of work and I had some Royal-blue (almost purple) scales.
 
camoninja said:
Looks great. Will this work on black scales ?
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I don't know man - I've been reading about it for a little while (it's worth a little bit of research before you jump into it). G10 is weird - a lot of darker colors will take lighter dyes (sort of contradictory to what I thought), but different color combinations come out with different results than you would expect. I was kind of worried about attempting orange from Foliage Green - wasn't too sure that it would come out right (but then I couldn't even find any, so it ended up not mattering because I'm impatient).
 
I'll say this: the Manix-II is the hardest pocket knife I've ever taken apart and put back together again.
 
I think you've inspired me to color my m4 manix handles. Nice work.

Couple questions...did you disassemble the handles completely, or did you leave the lanyard tube in (if you took it out...how)? How long did you leave the handles in to simmer. Other than that, did you just follow the instructions on the package?

Thanks for sharing. Really dig the way they came out!
 
Niles said:
I think you've inspired me to color my m4 manix handles. Nice work.

Couple questions...did you disassemble the handles completely, or did you leave the lanyard tube in (if you took it out...how)? How long did you leave the handles in to simmer. Other than that, did you just follow the instructions on the package?

Thanks for sharing. Really dig the way they came out!
Click to expand...

Yeah, I removed the scales completely from the knife before dying (that was what made it one of the hardest knives I've ever taken apart). I had to just basically wiggle them loose - applying pressure all around the circle (don't force it). It gets seriously hard once you get one scale off. The lanyard tube isn't really attached to anything at that point, but I couldn't get it free of the liners. I found a plastic ink pen that was the same size as the lanyard tube and sort of used it to push the tube out of the remaining scale.

I washed them with dish-soap (wearing rubber gloves because I've read that the oils from your skin can affect the dye). I didn't take off the gloves off until they were completely done dying/rinsing.

I boiled 2 quarts of water and dumped plenty of salt in (probably about 5 or so table spoons). Then I brought it down to just under a boil and mixed an entire package of dye with it and stirred. I brought the water down to a simmer and then hung the scales on my make-shift coat-hanger holders and dipped them in. While they were in there, I stirred every now and then to keep any undissolved powder from clinging to the scales and discoloring. I ended up getting mine out at about 15 mins and rinsing and drying, but then I put them back in for about 10 more mins just for good measure.

One thing I wished I had done was to scratch the back-side of the scales to see how deep the dye penetrated or how durable it was going to be. I've heard that no matter what you do, the dye won't penetrate that deep and it will eventually wear off (around the edges, or where it's scratched, etc.).
 
My RIT dyed M2 (pink G-10 to dark brown) has held up fairly well. The only time it faded was when I left it on a fence post overnight, during a rain storm. The exposed side faded a little but it still looks pretty good. The really good thing is that I never had the color bleed off on anything. Pretty amazing, really.

The dye doesn't penetrate very deep. A decent scratch will expose the original color but G-10 is pretty darned tough. It won't damage easily.
 
looks nice... good job! would like to eventually see an update of how well the dye held after some time as an edc.
 
Went for it on my M4 manix. Turned out real similar to yours. Thanks for the advice.

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Does G10 material can be made in white? Imagine Sal start to offer knives with white G10 handles and bunch of us buying multiple knives just to dye our own colors.
That will be a lot of money float in both Spyderco and Rit companies :)
 
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