- Joined
- Jul 3, 2012
- Messages
- 100
I stripped and acid-etched my BK-11 Becker's Necker knife and I thought I'd share the process.
Here it is before the mods:
I used 220 grit sandpaper and about an hours worth of elbow grease to strip the black coating off of the knife and to remove the rough vertical grind lines that Kabar leaves on the coated blades. Sanding those lines down sounds like walking in corduroy pants!
From here I worked my way up the grits- 320, 400, 600, 800, 1000. This gave a nice smooth finish:
Then I used some nail polish from the dollar store to put random blotches all over the knife and handle. I covered the whole edge of the blade and the Kabar and BK markings so they wouldn't get eaten away during the next step. Unfortunately I forgot to get a picture of it after this step, but here is what my BK16 looked like at this point so you can get an idea:
After that the knife takes a bath in ferric chloride acid, or PCB etching acid from Radio Shack. I cut the top off of a bottle of water and put the blade in, then filled the bottle with acid until the blade was covered. It will sit in this acid for an hour and ten minutes, then I'll check on it.
Here is what the knife looked like when it came out of the acid. It got rinsed for several minutes with hot water, then soaked in a solution of water and baking soda to neutralize any remaining acid. Notice how black the areas exposed to the acid are.
After cleaning off the nail polish with nail polish remover, then a sanding with 1200 and 2000 grit sandpaper, then a quick spin on the buffing wheel, and this is the final result.
Here is the BK-11 next to my similarly-modded BK-16
Thanks for looking
Here it is before the mods:
I used 220 grit sandpaper and about an hours worth of elbow grease to strip the black coating off of the knife and to remove the rough vertical grind lines that Kabar leaves on the coated blades. Sanding those lines down sounds like walking in corduroy pants!
From here I worked my way up the grits- 320, 400, 600, 800, 1000. This gave a nice smooth finish:
Then I used some nail polish from the dollar store to put random blotches all over the knife and handle. I covered the whole edge of the blade and the Kabar and BK markings so they wouldn't get eaten away during the next step. Unfortunately I forgot to get a picture of it after this step, but here is what my BK16 looked like at this point so you can get an idea:
After that the knife takes a bath in ferric chloride acid, or PCB etching acid from Radio Shack. I cut the top off of a bottle of water and put the blade in, then filled the bottle with acid until the blade was covered. It will sit in this acid for an hour and ten minutes, then I'll check on it.
Here is what the knife looked like when it came out of the acid. It got rinsed for several minutes with hot water, then soaked in a solution of water and baking soda to neutralize any remaining acid. Notice how black the areas exposed to the acid are.
After cleaning off the nail polish with nail polish remover, then a sanding with 1200 and 2000 grit sandpaper, then a quick spin on the buffing wheel, and this is the final result.
Here is the BK-11 next to my similarly-modded BK-16
Thanks for looking
