I had knicked the finish on a Becker BK11 while making scales for it, so I decided to strip it. 45 minutes with Citri-Strip blew the finish off with minimal scraping.
This made me think about the much abused paint on my 22 year old Cold Steel Carbon V Recon Tanto. I had become interested in Becker's and Ka-Bars largely when I realized they were using 50100B - pretty much Carbon V. So if a bare Becker is good, a nekkid Cold Steel knife seems like a good move, too.
Doing some research, most people did not show how they stripped their CS blades. Beckers have removable scales, so no worries about the stripper eating anything but paint. But the Kraton grips on the Recon and SRK are just slid over the stick tang and pinned by the lanyard tube, so removal isn't easy and the paint on the blade goes into the grips that aren't sealed.
Ideally, you'd want to be able to simply strip the blade with an easy chemical, but getting that chemical down inside, causing hidden rust; or eating the Kraton is not an option.
Then remembered how one knifemaker assembles his hollow handle knives - he epoxies it all together, then uses a brass scraper to remove the excess dried epoxy from the steel. Like brass brushes for gun cleaning, brass will not scratch hardened steel. So I put a small bevel on a chunk of brass and scraped the paint off about 1/8" all around the Kraton handle, down to the the steel. Then I masked the handle with heavy plastic tape, up onto the scraped area of the blade. When I applied the Citri-Strip, I sprayed toward the tip of the blade, then worked it back toward the handle with a Q-tip so contact with the tape edge was minimal.
The scraped area should act as a fire break between the coated blade and Kraton during stripping. The scraper left all the paint under the grip intact and unaffected by migrating stripper.
I should know if they all worked right in about 35 minutes. Wish me luck!
This made me think about the much abused paint on my 22 year old Cold Steel Carbon V Recon Tanto. I had become interested in Becker's and Ka-Bars largely when I realized they were using 50100B - pretty much Carbon V. So if a bare Becker is good, a nekkid Cold Steel knife seems like a good move, too.
Doing some research, most people did not show how they stripped their CS blades. Beckers have removable scales, so no worries about the stripper eating anything but paint. But the Kraton grips on the Recon and SRK are just slid over the stick tang and pinned by the lanyard tube, so removal isn't easy and the paint on the blade goes into the grips that aren't sealed.
Ideally, you'd want to be able to simply strip the blade with an easy chemical, but getting that chemical down inside, causing hidden rust; or eating the Kraton is not an option.
Then remembered how one knifemaker assembles his hollow handle knives - he epoxies it all together, then uses a brass scraper to remove the excess dried epoxy from the steel. Like brass brushes for gun cleaning, brass will not scratch hardened steel. So I put a small bevel on a chunk of brass and scraped the paint off about 1/8" all around the Kraton handle, down to the the steel. Then I masked the handle with heavy plastic tape, up onto the scraped area of the blade. When I applied the Citri-Strip, I sprayed toward the tip of the blade, then worked it back toward the handle with a Q-tip so contact with the tape edge was minimal.
The scraped area should act as a fire break between the coated blade and Kraton during stripping. The scraper left all the paint under the grip intact and unaffected by migrating stripper.
I should know if they all worked right in about 35 minutes. Wish me luck!