What is your favorite blade finish?

What blade finish do you prefer?

  • Hand rubbed satin

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Mirror polished

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Stone washed

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Damascus (voting on appearance, not the material)

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Blasted (ceramic, glass, or sand)

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Machine satin (lines perpendicular to edge)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    0
Matt Harildstad

Matt Harildstad

Joined
Oct 5, 1998
Messages
243
I'm running the same poll in the Custom Knife Forum, and I'm curious what the general forum thinks about blade finishes. I've used the same descriptions as on the custom forum.

The results could be interesting. I suppose that custom fanciers should vote in both polls to keep the distributions correct, but it's not like this is scientific or anything.:)
 
Generally, stone-washed does it for me. It doesn't show minor wear and tear-type scratches.
 
I like them all except for coated blades (teflon, ti-nitride), but if I had to choose a favourite, it would be stonewashed.
 
Hand Rubbed Satin, if something happens in the way of a scratch, you can service it yourself, though the stone washed seems to hold up very well also!
G2
 
I like stone washed for a hard working blade.

Hand satin, or mirrow polish for a gentleman's knife.
 
A well done bead blast gets my vote. One that has almost a depth to it, if you know what I mean. Bead blasting has corrosion issues, but when new, it looks good.
 
. . .a mirrored polished blade.

But then again. . .hard to beat the beauty of a hand rubbed satin finish ! :D
 
but a finish I love even better is stained carbon. there is something really mysterious about carbon when it gets used. that blue streak looks so great.
 
Ok not counting finishes... I guess what I really like is polished.... at least until I scratch the hell out of it (which is almost inevitable)
 
For production blades I like the stonewashed finish or satin finish. Not overly reflective, yet prevent rust and hide scratches well.

Erik
 
Darrel Ralph's ceramic peen gets my vote. Love the way it looks with the grinds blasted, and the flats satin finished.
Other than that, I'm pretty impartial between stonewash and satin, and I don't care about scratches.
 
Interesting poll. I think it is only fair to seperate production knives, from collector knives.

I'm on the production knife side, and my preference is satin. Even then, I prefer fine ground satin. I don't like big grind marks.

Mirror - Looks emaculate but you feel like crap when it gets scratched.

Black T and other coatings - no character, and looks ugly when it gets scratched up. Good protection against oxidation though.

Bead blast - was a novelty for awhile which has worn out its welcome.

Stonewash - blechhh! Looks like unfinished steel panelling on a car.
 
I like the Blak -ti on my Dutch Hill Knives SOK survival/ camping/fighting knife(www.hillknives.com), because it prevents the ATS34 blade from rusting quickly. For my Hill Knives outdoorfolding knife I really like the polished ATS34 blade.
 
The poll results are a little different than I had expected. There is more agreement between the General Forum and the Custom Forum than I had anticipated. To summarize after 4 days:


.................Custom Forum..........General Forum
Hand rubbed satin...23 53.49%..............24 46.15%
Mirror polished.........7 16.28%...............8 15.38%
Stone washed.........2 4.65%........... .....8 15.38%
Damascus...............7 16.28%...............6 11.54%
Blasted............. .....3 6.98%................2 3.85%
Machine satin..........1 2.33%................4 7.69%


That the custom forumites were less interested in stone washed was probably to be expected. That the General Forumites were so disinterested in blasted finishes was a real surprise to me. Maybe we can soon be singing "ding dong, the witch is dead" as far as blasted finishes go.

The big surprise to me was that as a finish, damascus did not score higher than it did on the custom forum.

Fun polls. Thanks to all who have participated. It would be nice to get some more votes in though. Interesting that only 1/6 of views result in a vote, do we all check back about results 6 times?
 
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