Satanite for Blade Coating

[Deweyknives]

I'm planning to use some satanite for a decarb coating on o-1. Looking for some pointers BEFORE I make ALL the mistakes. Any advise would be greatly appreciated!!

 

[Guy Thomas]

A thin wash should work reasonably well. My limited experience with using it also included a thicker coating on the back of the blade and I had more scaling and discoloration than I expected. But, I applied the wash and the coating prior to my normalization heats and the thermal expansion and contraction apparently creates all manner of small cracks in the clay. If I remember right I had next to no scaling on the areas that were coated only by just the wash and it was the back of the blade under the thicker satanite where most of the problems were.

 

[Deweyknives]

Thanks Guy, just make a thin paste and spread on a paper-thin coat and let it dry? I have some blades finished to 400g and hope to HT without having to resand. I hope to be able to just clean them off and do my secondary bevel, final sand and sharpen. Trying to save LOTS of work AFTER HTing.

 

[Guy Thomas]

No, not a paste, literally a liquid wash of satanite and distilled water that you can paint on with a brush. Dries pretty quick too. I haven't tried it for the purpose you intend so you just may have to give it a go and see how it works. At the very least you won't have to re-finish it as much as you would have otherwise. If you want a blade that you don't have to resand at all you'll need one of the anti-scale products on the market. Brownell's carries one, an ATP product that is supposed to work pretty well:

http://www.brownells.com/aspx/NS/store/ProductDetail.aspx?p=23076&title=ANTI+SCALE+COATING

I have some but haven't had the chance to try it out yet, but I've seen Don Fogg demostrate using it and it worked like a charm.

 

[Deweyknives]

Thanks again, Guy. That gives me a good base to start from. Just got a load of forge supplies [thanks Darren],so I have some [Satanite] to experment with.