Strip BLACK Coating from KABAR....Possible or not?

N

Nalapombu

Joined
Oct 26, 2001
Messages
303
Hey all,

A buddy of mine has a Short Kabar with the plain edge that he uses for deer hunting and woods walking. We were talking about knives and I mentioned that I had been nosing around on Ebay and looking at some of the vintage Kabar fixed blades and they looked great in that they didn't have the black blade coating and were just satin finished. That prompted a discussion on whether it would be easy to take the blade coating off of his Kabar. Then if it was not too BIG or complex to do, would it be advisable or lead to rusting and pitting. Naturally I didn't know the answers. I did agree that I thought it would look great with a satin blade.

So before my buddy takes a belt sander to his Kabar, can you all tell me what kind of job it would be to remove that black coating and if you did want to do such a thing what the best way to go about it would be? Any help or advice in doing a job like this would be appreciated. If it would NOT be advisable, I would like to hear that too.

Thanks for your time and help.

Nala
 
mask off the handle, spray the black with autobody stripper and wrap in plastic. Leave overnight. In morning remove with scrubby pad and dishsoap. Comes wright off.
 
Ka-Bars are made of carbon steel, so your friend will have to keep the blade oiled at all times to prevent rusting.
 
I found a knife that was made softer and scraped mine down ,it had a nice dark finish underneath almost like a used patina.
 
Removed the coating on one of mine and it did have a nice "patina" look to it ... keep it oiled!
 
He'll have to understand that his blade will not stay bright & shiny without the coating. It will naturally discolor, turning shades of grey, blue, green, brown, mostly grey, a little orange maybe... and did I mention grey? That's called patina, and it's a form of oxidization on the outside of carbon steel. To the untrained (spoiled 21st century) eye, it looks unsightly. However, it protects the steel from actual rust.
Oiling the blade helps control the patina process.
Also, the coating is easy to take off. You can use sandpaper, chemical strippers, whatever you like. Just be careful if you put it on a belt sander, and don't let it heat up too much.
 
How's the finish of the Ka-Bar under all the black crud? I stripped a Camillus MkII and an Ontario PSK with a dremel wire wheel. The Camillus had a much better finish, underneath. It ended up looking very much like the Ideal it was patterned after. The Ontario had terrible finish under the black stuff. Very rough looking.

Frank
 
The one I had (gave it to a knifeless buddy) had a nice smooth finish under the coating but like I said above the blade had a dark gray color to it that looked like smoked chrome .
 
Bushman5 said:
mask off the handle, spray the black with autobody stripper and wrap in plastic. Leave overnight. In morning remove with scrubby pad and dishsoap. Comes wright off.
Click to expand...

Thats the way I did it and it worked great:thumbup:
 
I have stripped a number of different knives, and a couple axes...

I have found Citri Stripper to work really well. Just fullow the directions. Don't let it touch that which you do not want stripped, and you should get a good result.

Marion
 
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