How to patina a carbon steel blade using mustard

Oh just buy one, you'll be a happy camper! ;) Life is too short and you work too hard to deprive yourself of a few nice toys. Besides, you got me going with those Filipino choppers, which are only slightly more than a good Mora. I think I will have to order me one for Christmas...my wife or daughter would find it to weird to buy me one.
 
I did the same process over again -mustard, onion - and I got an even richer blue/black. Very nice. My wife will never be able to see the shine of the computer screen off my blade as I low-crawl to the refrigerator to do some wet work.
 
I gotta put SkunkWerx on ignore... bastid keeps convincin me to buy stuff!

Seriously, I think I'ma order a Mora just for the sake of comparing it to the Becker Necker for general utility. All in the name of science!


ColdWood, about that shine or lack of it... I notice the lemon finish on my MH is a nice matte/satin grey from almost any angle. But if I turn it almost parallel to my line of sight, it's like a mirror. Literally, I can read newsprint in the reflection. Try it with yours, I bet you'll see it. (This probably sounds retarded to a lot of you but I think it's cool, hehe.) I'm conjecturing that the smoothness of the patina reflects a good even coating, yes?
 
Gibson, I understand what you're saying...I haven't done this yet to my MH...not because I don't want to, it's already tarnished and orange/blue, my preferred finish...but I wanted to experiment on the Mora first. The MH is next, which is my favorite field carry.

So, yeah, if you have a highly polished blade, regardless of the blackening you put on it, it will reflect images. Look at any car windows you've seen that have been blackened, they are like mirrors.

This brings up another topic and I'm going to start another thread here about the relationship of handles to blades, etc.
 
Well,

Not to much of either took to the blade. I don't think that it's even worth photographing. The blade is just slightly darker.
 
OK guys, you are geniuses.

I placed one of my carbon steel knives in a glass of
white vinegar, after washing the knife in very hot water,
drying it well, and rubbing it down with 0000 steel wool.

Left it in the glass a few hours.

Removed it, rinsed with very hot water, wiped it with a
towel, then again rubbed it down with 0000 steel wool.

Looked good, not great. Had darkened but the finish seemed
somewhat soft and powdery.

So last night I mustarded the knife in brown mustard for about an
hour.

Rinsed off with very hot water, dried with a towel, rubbed with
0000 steel wool.

Looked great!!

Worked on it for a while again with 0000 steel wool.
Now this knife has a beautiful - and very hard - medium
gray finish/patina; nice and shiny too.

I am so pleased with the results I just had to thank everyone
who posted in this thread!

(I will attempt some photos later when I get home.)
 
ERdept said:
Well,

Not to much of either took to the blade. I don't think that it's even worth photographing. The blade is just slightly darker.
Click to expand...

Your Benchmade 710, as Les deAsis would tell you, is D2 tool steel, high in chromium. That is why it does not easily take a patina. The knives I have with rich patinas, through natural use and age, or artificially induced, are 1095HC cutlery steel.

Codger
 
Yeah, what Codger said about chromium content. Don't forget, that's why they put it in stainless steels :) This is another of those weird turnarounds where we're doing things almost in direct opposition to "modern know-how"... seems to happen quite a bit in Wilderness...
 
Codger_64 said:
Your Benchmade 710, as Les deAsis would tell you, is D2 tool steel, high in chromium. That is why it does not easily take a patina. The knives I have with rich patinas, through natural use and age, or artificially induced, are 1095HC cutlery steel.

Codger
Click to expand...

Ah, I see. Ok, well it's darker than stock and with a few spots. Oh well. I'm not going to do my Burt Foster, 52100. ha ha.
 
Coldwood said:
So, yeah, if you have a highly polished blade, regardless of the blackening you put on it, it will reflect images.
Click to expand...

Hang on a sec, lemme clarify... the blade was definitely not highly polished. It was satin when I got it, and I was in the process of hand-rubbing it to get the ugly logo's off it. It was at a rough 400 finish when I lemon-ated it. (Heh!) No way in hell could I read a stop sign in that thing, let alone newsprint.

What I'm seeing is, the patina itself has a very smooth, glass-like finish to it. I'm guessing it's less than a half-thousandth thick. The corners of the spine are already showing "clean" steel from being in and out of the Kydex sheath a few times. This is not a bad thing, it's all part of the character. ;)

It would be interesting to see two blades of the same steel treated the same way; one blade polished to a mirror finish, and one in a "user friendly" satin finish. As a wild hairy guess, I'm gonna say the mirror finish would benefit less from artificial patina inducement.

ERdept said:
Oh well. I'm not going to do my Burt Foster, 52100. ha ha.
Click to expand...

I would think 52100 would take a real nice patina ;>
 
I just put a patina on my bk-16 but I didn't have a chance to sand it down first. It came out well enough for me for now after 5 mustard treatments, and 3 rounds of lemon juice and vinegar over two days. It was all nothing how I expected it to be after watching vids and stuff on it, also had old paint stripper, it took a long time to get the coating off. My questions, what brand stripper do you guys use for this kind of thing, and do you think this patina should be adequate until I get the micarta scales in, which is when I plan on sanding and re applying.
34r9ixt.jpg
 
I like to get half a lemon and run the blade under the hot tap to heat it up,then rub the lemon on it and wait till it cools, then repeat several times.it is a very controllable way to patinate your blade.good for bringing out quench lines too.
 
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