Remove blade finish without media blasting?

R

Rusty Shackelford

Joined
Jul 19, 2020
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145
Hey y'all, this is my first thread on this forum with more to come i'm sure. I have a TOPS Frog Market Special that I really like however I'm not big on coated blades. A large part of the enjoyment of owning a carbon steel knife for me is developing a patina through use. TOPS uses their Black River Wash which is coated in clear Cerakote according to their site, Is there any way to remove this without media blasting?
 
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This is what I used to strip the coating off of a couple of esee knives. Got it I. The paint section of a local big box stores... The one with the smiley face
 
razor-edge-knives said:
You can hand sand it if you wanted...
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What would be the best grit to use? 800? 1200? should I progress through grits or can it be removed with a single grit since i'm not trying to remove old tooling marks? Just looking for a finish that will patina well, not looking for something ultra shiny/polished. Not even positive I will go this route but I'd like to know what would be best if I do.
 
Buzz down to your local auto parts store and get a roll of Emery cloth. That's worked for me in the past, I actually started those esee knives I mentioned with that.


You could just take it to a bench grinder...:rolleyes:
 
IMHO, it might be worth calling around to local gun smiths with the ability to hit it with an abrasive media blast. It would not take very long to do, and it would result in a consistent finish.
 
pnsxyr said:
IMHO, it might be worth calling around to local gun smiths with the ability to hit it with an abrasive media blast. It would not take very long to do, and it would result in a consistent finish.
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Even a local weld/machine shop too. Might be a bit cheaper than a gunsmith.
 
There is definitely satisfaction to be had making a knife "yours". I'm far from an accomplished craftsman, but if you take your time it's not very hard to get good results.

As an aside there are plenty of great guys here in the community that I'm sure you could contact in the "services wanted" sub forum that could give you superb results for a reasonable price.
 
Rusty Shackelford said:
What would be the best grit to use? 800? 1200? should I progress through grits or can it be removed with a single grit since i'm not trying to remove old tooling marks? Just looking for a finish that will patina well, not looking for something ultra shiny/polished. Not even positive I will go this route but I'd like to know what would be best if I do.
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220-400 grit would be what I started with
 
Rusty Shackelford said:
I'll look into it.
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Where are ya? My blasting cabinet is set up with aluminum oxide, and ready to go. If you're not in Socal, maybe someone else reading this could help you out.

I've done a lot of patina on a lot of metal, and I think your process is going to depend on what you want the finished product to look like. I think I'd start with the blasting, then wire wheel, and depending on how it looks, go through progressively finer emery cloth.
 
RustyIron said:
Where are ya? My blasting cabinet is set up with aluminum oxide, and ready to go. If you're not in Socal, maybe someone else reading this could help you out.

I've done a lot of patina on a lot of metal, and I think your process is going to depend on what you want the finished product to look like. I think I'd start with the blasting, then wire wheel, and depending on how it looks, go through progressively finer emery cloth.
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I'm in upstate NY, I think I'm just gonna buy a cheap media blasting gun and do it at home, I saw an interesting video where a guy removed what he claimed to be cerakote using table salt as a blasting abrasive on an ar receiver and it didn't remove the anodizing, I figured I'd give it a shot before trying anything more abrasive/expensive. I don't have a cabinet so I really would rather not invest in any of the more expensive medias unless I had to. I can get black diamond coal slag here really cheap but it seems a bit extreme for this, I was thinking maybe glass media if the salt idea fails. This may end up costing just as much as taking it somewhere but at least when I'm done I can say I did it myself and I'll have the blasting gun for the occasional project as they come up.
 
A small blast cabinet is a good idea. Avoid the coal slag. I used it about 40 years ago, and the variation of particle size was problematic. Crushed glass media is pretty cheap.
 
So I decided to try a good scrub with barkeepers friend and a scouring pad and it's taking it up, might not be as fast as media blasting but it does appear that it will remove the cerakote they use for their black river wash finish.
 
I have been thinking about removing the black epoxy coat on my ontario ct5 machete...
thanks for a bunch of good ideas, I'm still not sure if I want to - but patina is much nicer imho
 
Bill DeShivs said:
A bench grinder with a wire wheel will remove it easily.
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I don't have a brass or fine steel wheel on my grinder, fairly certain anything I have would scratch the blade up pretty bad. What i'm doing isn't really fast but it is going to work and not take THAT long.

dirc said:
I have been thinking about removing the black epoxy coat on my ontario ct5 machete...
thanks for a bunch of good ideas, I'm still not sure if I want to - but patina is much nicer imho
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They make chemical strippers just for epoxy, that's the route I'd take for something like that.
 
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