Which Spyderco are you carrying today?

Knives&Lint said:
Fade dyed, forced a patina, and flamed the hardware on the K390 Stretch yesterday

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Looks like you did a good job man 👍🏻
 
maloosik said:
I would love to know how to do the patina and clip mods you’ve done here.
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Certainly! Glad to share!

First of all, before you attempt any of these I suggest you watch as many YouTube tutorials as possible, as that is where I learned, and they provide a better hands-on explanation.

Flaming the clips and hardware is pretty straightforward. First, since the clip was black for some reason on this knife, I obviously hand to sand the coating off. When it comes to the flaming, most people I have seen use a torch, but since I don't have one and I do happen to have a gas stove, I use my gas stove. I use a pair of hemostats to securely hold the piece. Going bronze is fairly ez-pz, you just eyeball it until it gets to a color you are happy with. It's getting the hints of purples and blues that need a higher heat and are more of a guessing game. With those you need to heat the piece until it is glowing red. It's something you kinda have to get a feel for, and if you go too far you will end up with a dull dark grey finish. The good thing is, if that happens you can just sand the piece and start again. Either way, when I think I am at a good finishing point, I quench the piece in a glass container containing Windex. It's not really as daunting as it sounds, every time I have done it I have been a bit trepidations about it, but I have yet to ruin anything, and in the end I'm always happy with the results and glad I did it. Pretty soon you'll be looking at all your knives searching for opportunities to do the same ;)


When it comes to the patina, I was pretty much experimenting here and using some methods I have used in the past on my traditional knives that have carbon steel (I actually combined two different methods here). First I just cut some fruit (apples & oranges) and left the blade out to dry for a bit. Then I gave the blade a bath in apple cider vinegar (I can't remember how long 20-30min?), and after that I let the blade sit out as well.

For the pattern, I mixed some mustard with a touch of apple cider vinegar. I then used a toothpick to apply the pattern. I started with two lines along the edge of the blade, and then put drops of mustard randomly around the rest of the blade. I let it sit for 30 minutes, rinsed it off, and then repeated the process. For the second layer, I just did one line in between the first two lines, and then randomly did dots again. Wait 30min, rinse. It's where the two layers overlap that you really get the blues that show up when the light hits it right.

Again, I was just experimenting here going into this blind, and I am by no means an expert. I've done the mustard pattern patina a handful of times on carbon steel, and I've done the fruit acid patina before, but this is the first time I've combined the two. Obviously, this will only work on certain steels (not stainless) and likely some better than others. It didn't turn out exactly as I had expected, but I still ended up with a result I am happy with, and I'm glad I did it and made it my own (honestly once I had the idea there was no way I could not do it).

Here's an example of the mustard patina on it's own on a GEC I did; and below is an example of flaming on the clip of my AD20.5, where I was really able to hit the blues and purples well (apologies for the non-Spyderco content).

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Just arrived today, an oddity for my collection. the in-hand ergonomics on this are just downright awful. Whether i grip forward or back a bit doesn’t matter, I have medium/large hands and the finger grooves are just off enough to ruin the grip for me no matter how I hold it. Does pocket better than I expected it to with that blade end though however the horn on the end of the blade can catch on your pocket and open the knife as you pull it out. Not good.

Just an all out ridiculous design and I can’t see carrying this for anything beyond a show piece.

Update: it’s growing on me. I can get use to the less than ideal ergonomics. It’s odd enough to just fall in love with. And the more I spend time with it, the ergos are feeling a little better. Maybe just the initial shock takes some getting used to.



 
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