Opinel No. 7 - Patina

rogatsby said:
Good luck to you as well!
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I would say use the knife as well from personal experience in getting patinas with both methods. I don't mean this condescendingly such as the quoted post might come off to be. Since we're on the internets though, I think we can assume it wasn't :)
 
Well here are two of them carbon blades very subject to "patina". The first one below has been kept "clean" (understand "rinsed and dried" over 30 years), the second one was shlepped along on the roads for 10 + years and then retreated in the kitchen drawer (with very little care) for 30 years. Then, cleaned, rust-erased and polished, jut for the giggles. It appears to be still very capable. Whatever, I am not in favour of artificially "patina'ing" a carbon steel blade. It will happen anyway... So... Use it, enjoy it, and keep it clean. Some patina will develop... not an achievement and not an issue, either. It's just the ways carbon steel lives.
Trusted EDC and kitchen knife (with some love) :
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Trusted EDC and kitchen knife (in a time where I didn't give a dime, but it's still alive...)
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Can't see emotion through txt. Super easy to take things the wrong way. This thread went sideways fast. Anyways decent start to a patina. I have a spyderco Bradley 2 I tried to do a quick patina on with vinegar but that m4 steel for some reason did not want to take it well. I let it soak for hours and nothing. Switched to mustard and got some decent patina on one side and a lighter one on the other. So mustard did better than the vinegar for me. You should try some of that on there. Cover it in mustard then take a toothpick and and use the tip to scrape mustard off in whatever pattern you want then let it sit for a while.
 
steelhead seeker said:
Can't see emotion through txt. Super easy to take things the wrong way. This thread went sideways fast. Anyways decent start to a patina. I have a spyderco Bradley 2 I tried to do a quick patina on with vinegar but that m4 steel for some reason did not want to take it well. I let it soak for hours and nothing. Switched to mustard and got some decent patina on one side and a lighter one on the other. So mustard did better than the vinegar for me. You should try some of that on there. Cover it in mustard then take a toothpick and and use the tip to scrape mustard off in whatever pattern you want then let it sit for a while.
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Thanks for the advice on the mustard. I am pretty happy with how my Opinel is now. Maybe I will try to go further with mustard.

As for the direction of the thread, I agree. I had a misunderstanding with one poster, and I offered my apologies like a man, and he accepted. Then all these bandwagoners jumped in and started adding me too their "ignore list." Oh well. Can't please everyone all the time.
 
Use your blade, give it time, keep using it... then you will have a patina.

I don't dig into any kind of forced patina. Actually I don't get the concept.
It don't look like anything real.

My grandfather had an opinel for years, and it had a patina than IMO you cannot really get from a forced process.
Patina is like wrinkles, it says about your life :)
 
I force patina often to try to protect the blade from rust a little out of the gate. It looks neat as well if you do it this way. Just cut some paper towels into strips and wet them with vinegar. Then wrap the blade tightly and let it dry, overnight usually works. If you let them dry on the blade you will get a nice, almost black, color. Thing is, that will wear off and you will just end up with a lighter, more natural patina which you would get anyway.

So, a patina for me is mostly for rust inhibition.
 
Can I say I hate this ? No offense really... It's nice to experiment and some experiments turn out surprisingly nice. However, the only forced patina that really won me over was a dark blue patina achieved with cider(?) vinegar on a classic american pattern (Trapper, Stockman... ? CV, 1095... ?). It looked extremely good, because it was even and a gorgeous colour to boot. I suspect the quality of the forced patina depends not only on the medium used (vinegar, mustard, whatever...) but also on the type of steel. 1095 may not react like 1065 (the Opinel's steel).
 
Therom said:
Use your blade, give it time, keep using it... then you will have a patina.

I don't dig into any kind of forced patina. Actually I don't get the concept.
It don't look like anything real.

My grandfather had an opinel for years, and it had a patina than IMO you cannot really get from a forced process.
Patina is like wrinkles, it says about your life :)
Click to expand...

Must respect for your opinion, and to some extent I sympathize. But my main reason for forcing the patina was to protect against red rust. I live in a place with very humid conditions in the summer. Also, I am not the only one who does this with carbon blades, and I was happy with my results. Philosophically, I agree that real use to obtain a patina may be superior. But I don't think there is any real harm done in speeding up the process. But thanks very much for your comments.
 
Did the same thing to a K390 Mule. Have ended up not liking it, one of many mistakes made as I was making a handle for that knife!

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My experience with opinel is to simply dry it after use
If you use it on a daily basis it shall prevent a lot of rust on it

Actually I am not sure forced patina will bring you an efficient rust protection of rust would have been a real problem

By the way even if I done like them as much as the carbon steel version, Opinel offers stainless steel blade versions for their knives
 
I like to use onions. For two reasons. I like the pattern, and I like onions. So when I use my knife to prepare a meal, and don't have any onions, at least I know there was an onion involved. I tried to get a use patina on this one, but it was just getting rust spots. Stick a large vadalia for two days, remove clean and oil.

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