how are blades heat colored

T

tanto_dude

Joined
Jan 25, 2008
Messages
41
I have seen the blades on johanknives.com and caffreyknives.com and I wondered if anyone here has done it, im not asking for your closely guarded techniques but I do want to know basically how it's done

if its too much of a secret nobody has to answer

thanks =)
 
especially green, thats amazing, i have heard this is done with saltpeter or Chilean saltpeter or another molten oxidizer
 
If you heat color your blade after heat treat, you will likely ruin the heat treat.
 
You can do it after heat treat if you are careful. I have done a few. I use wet Kao Wool and a small propane torch. Have the blade clean and polished up. Then use one hand to rock the blade in the wet Koa and with the other aim the torch at the spine, run the heat along the spine but, stay away from the tip. The blade will start with a light golden brown, this is about 400 depending on the steel etc. It will turn a blue at about 600. One the blade starts to color move the torch back and away for a second to check the color and make sure the edge stays cool, then hit it again for a second. Go slowly.
I have colored knives in a oven also by, doing only one temper after hardening then after finishing and polishing the blade do the second temper for a nice golden color. I don't do it anymore, for one thing I don't think the color will last with any use. Plus I kind of lost my fascination with it. Jim

These are some of my early damascus knives of nickel/1095 colored that way

aaaaaaa.jpg


goldcopy.jpg

.
 
5 or 6 years ago I accidentally stumbled into a real easy process for coloring blades when I was messing around with mustard patinas and it should work on just about any blade finish. Basically all I would do is just run another heat treating cycle. Once the blade got hot I'd pull it out of the oven and apply a coat of paste wax and put it back in the oven for the rest of the cycle. Not sure why it did what it did but for some reason having the wax on it would cause the blade to become a real dark blue and in some cases purple with red hues. Temps were from 350 up to 400 degrees with soaks from an hour to an hour and a half.
 
Last edited:
iv'e seen that green color i think it was in one of the annuals (knives). i think it was a cable knife made buy wayne goddard, and it was green as a bullfrog.

andrew
 
so are heat colored blades not usable as far as cutting....does it affect the heat treatment or not?.....ryan
 
I've gotten that golden to golden brown color before as well during temper cycles. It does have a cool look to it but it isn't deep at all. It usually rubs off with a few swipes of 220 grit paper. If the blade were never to see use, I think it would look really cool. If you somehow matched the color with the scales it would look really cool. I'm not really sure how bluing works but couldn't you get some color effects by messing with it in that way? Somehow effecting the bluing color itself?
 
ryan9977 said:
so are heat colored blades not usable as far as cutting....does it affect the heat treatment or not?.....ryan
Click to expand...

Ryan, The way I mentioned didn't hurt the steel any in fact I'm sure it did it good. Almost anything you heat color is purely surface treatment so if you scratch the blade the scratch will be very much noticed. That was the main reason I stopped doing that.
 
Bluing can be done 4 differnet ways.

1- Cold bluing with a bluing solution
2- Gun bluing with low temp salts, all you get is blue
3- Nitre Bluing salts which are high temp- bronze, purple, and blue colors can be acheived
4- Heat coloring with a torch
 
i have at times, taken guards and fittings, and beadblasted, then coated with oil. the pourous surface will hold oil, and then i heated with torch, i huess it kind of cooks the oil into the steel somewhat, but it gets a rich dark color to it, without even really reaching temper colors
 
i think it colores differently because the damascus has different tones of steel so they heat differently
 
Re: "I've always wondered how Gustafsson got those different colors in his damascus"

Yes... Yes... I want to know how this is done as well.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top