How to make DLC coat looks like "already wear off" or stonewashed.

[Bill DeShivs]

People have been removing the coloration from their Glock DLC coated slides for years. It's a carburizing treatment for steel.

 

[eKretz]

Bill , I have some parts DLC coated and it is out of question you can make single scratch with sandpaper no matter how much you try that .How this guys can do that on knives without any effort I can t understand ? It is thickness of coating , it is some kind of decorative DLC coating or what ?

It's tough stuff but it's not actually diamond. All it takes is one little spot to get through and then it comes right off - especially easy to start at a corner, for instance. I have never tried it with a piece of sandpaper by hand, but with a belt sander it is off in just a few seconds. There are several different types of DLC, something like 6 or 7 IIRC. The coatings are generally pretty thin, measured in microns. Thickest is usually around 30 microns - or a little over a thousandth of an inch.

People have been removing the coloration from their Glock DLC coated slides for years. It's a carburizing treatment for steel.

The latter statement is definitely not accurate. Carburizing is a treatment that adds carbon into the surface of steel through diffusion. From there it is able to be heat treated as though it were a higher carbon steel (which it now is - at the surface). This is often called case hardening.

DLC is a coating that is sputtered on through vapor deposition. Totally different thing.

With your previous mention of nitride and Glock - I'm assuming you are probably more familiar with something like their nDLC slide treatment - whatever they are doing, those are actually two separate processes: 1.) nitriding or nitrocarburizing/carbonitriding and 2.) DLC. I have read about them combining both processes into one oven to speed things up but they are still unique processes.

 

[spyderHS08]

Any issues with the edge during this?