Parkerizing with black oxide

N

North woods Knives

Joined
Feb 25, 2014
Messages
30
Hey guys!
Another question. I'm wanting to parkerize a few of my blades. Some one recomended that I use black oxide http://www.caswellcanada.ca/shop/black-oxide-concentrate.html . Does any one know if that stuff can be used like the parkeriziong solution found at Brownells or is there some other procedure.:confused:

Also does anyone know of a canadian suppler of parkerizing solution or manganese phosphate. Any better alternatives for a nice grey-black finish other than coating.
 
Only a very few of the cold black oxide/bluing processes are worth much of anything IMO. They look good for a while, but don't hold a match to the tried and true old processes. There are a few though, but I have no history with the Caswell stuff. I was given a bottle of a cold blue mixture by a gunsmith a few years ago that I assume he mixed himself. While not completely cold (he recommended heating the mix to 150° ish) but it works pretty darn well. The knife in my avatar is done with it... Surface prep is key with all of them as well...

I read several tutorials revising the typical black oxide process; which traditionally uses amonium nitrate as the nitrate constituent of the active solution and produces pure ammonia gas (very dangerous), replacing that with sodium nitrate. The resulting process achieves the same final finish (creating a thin magnetite layer on the steel) but without the offending gas production. Lye (sodium hydroxide) on its own is pretty nasty stuff. Now, from what bit of chemistry I didn't sleep through or haven't learned serving meth lab warrants in the last ten years, this process seems like it would be a reasonably saf(er) process... don't want to link to another forum, but lets just say you can pretty much look up the traditional process and substitute sodium nitrate for ammonium nitrate. Yet another recipe I have seen uses sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite.

Any of the surface treatments like this however are only as good as your final sealant which is 'absorbed' by the tiny holes in the magnetite.

Or, find your local gunsmith and buy him a pint. Then ask to slip some of your bits in with his next run if he does so in house.

-Eric
 
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I just tried that exact product on some 3-v and some m-4 and it doesn't work, it just left some smutty residue that would rub off on your fingers, it might work on 0-1 or 1085.
 
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