Remove coating on BM 710HS?

[AlonzoMosely]

I did search the site and found comments that acetone or brake cleaner might work on epoxy coatings, but I don't know what the coating is on the 710HS. Any suggestions on how I might do this?

 

[rebeltf]

Cannot find what the coating is , could be an epoxy paint.

One wonders if under the coating is a not very clean blade. Seems to me that most of the time a blade is coated or heavily bead blasted , it covers up all the imperfections and so forth , in other words if you take the coating off , do you have a bigger job in front of you ?

 

[yablanowitz]

Benchmade used a couple of different coatings on their M2 blades, and neither was paint. If I recall correctly, they were both boron-based. They were applied to inhibit rust on the tool-steel (non-stainless) HSS blades. I don't recommend removing it, but it is your knife. I don't know offhand of any solvents that will get the job done though.

 

[jkarp_53]

Solvents won't do much of anything. The finish is bonded to the steel microscopically...even with buffing you won't get ALL of it off because the blade's prepped with additional roughness before the coating's applied. I suppose you could bead or sand blast it, but that would remove steel from the blade and might not even then be perfect.

One thought: You could send the knife to someone like Tom Krein, who could put the blade through a re-grind...there was an M2 Ritter that sold a few weeks ago that was done beautifully.

Hope that helps.

 

[orthogonal1]

Why remove the coating?

There are people who will make you a new shiny blade.

If the blade is in like-new condition, you could sell it to raise funds. These knives are currently bringing a bit of a premium, after all.

 

[65535]

Hell if it's new I'll trade you a shiny D2 uncoated blade.

 

[Uncle Rukus]

Yeah if you list that pup on the for sale forum it won't be more than about 10 min before someone nabs it. You could demand a price that would cover the cost of a D2 uncoated 710 from newgraham.com.

 

[ToyKnife]

First off, I think your nuts for removing the coating but if you do it is not going to be easy or feasible. It is like the HK HE finish that is bonded to the metal on a microscopic level. Even if the finish is rubbed off the metal is still protected. Great finish for a firearm. If you do want to sell put me down on the list of buys; right after 65535.

 

[yoda4561]

The coating used to be Birdsong Black T, while they did change it a while back the M2 HS blades I think still used black T or a similar coating. Paint stripper didn't touch it, I hand sanded my M2HS and it was a real PITA to get the coating down to bare metal. Then I had to deal with the extremely rough grinding marks underneath the black finish. If I had to do it all over again I would suggest leaving the coating on the M2 HS blades. Mine had to have so much material removed to get an even finish that the washers are now too thin for a proper fit, whenever I can get around to it I'll need to order some thicker phosphor bronze ones.

 

[mcmc]

Even if the finish is rubbed off the metal is still protected.

Wow, this is very interesting. So even if parts of the finish is scraped away during use, it's really only a cosmetic issue, and the blade itself is still protected (particularly from rust)?

Maintenance and worry about messing up the protective coating is what led to my selling off my RSK and RSK mini M2's.

 

[yoda4561]

If the metal prep is perfect and the coating of the proper type then yes, even if the coating is "worn" to what appears to be bare metal it will still be protected. Further wear of course will remove any protection in time.

 

[rangerover_95]

My Mini AFCK with M2 has some minimal wear on the coating (mainly at all the grind lines, and at the wickedly large and sharp edge) and I use it as a food prep knife, among other things. All that time around water and corrosive citrus juice and I still have yet to see a speck of rust on any part of that knife.

However, knowing that M2 is highly rust-prone, why would you want to remove the coating?

The coating that BM used on their knives with M2 was their BT coating, which they no longer use. That coating is IMO ten times better than the current BK coating that they use now. It seems to be very resistant to wear in compairison to BK, as I have used that knife to break down cardboard daily for about a year now (heavy duty cardboard too!), and have what I would consider to be minimal wear. When I say minimal, it looks like someone drew pencil on all the grind lines on my blade, but just at the lines, not any further.

 

[orthogonal1]

I agree with rangrover 95, the older coatings appear to be better than the new coating BM uses.

 

[j_d]

I recently stripped another knife that was looking really ragged after ten years of pretty good use. I used acetone to soak it it. I have seen pictures of others using this and the coating almost bubbling off but my stuff was really stubborn. the acetone only softened it and then i was able to start scraping it off with a chisel. This still left a mess. What helped the most was a sanding wheel from my drill composed of scotchbright and sand paper flaps. I used a medium and then a fine and was very pleased with the way it turned out. I sanded length wise on the blade, changing direction looks bad and makes for more sanding. I have seen in the past several posts with pics about stripping knives that might be helpful if you can find them. Good luck.
josh