Who can stonewash my Benchmade blade?

Glass wont penetrate the plastic bottle.

I would suggest not using pebbles if you're going to stick it in a drier.
Pebbled will impact the metal more than scratch it and you'll end up with pitted (almost like a blasted finish) metal instead of stonewashed metal.

Water is a big part of the solution. I added water so that the material (glass) wouldn't hit the metal, but scrape across it instead. With water you don't have to worry about the glass poking into the plastic.
What you do have to worry about though is the bottle breaking from just being thrown a million times.

I thought about getting together a mix of water, chips of ceramic, and my bolsters and putting it into a small empty paint can and taking it to a shop with a paint shaker then stickign it in.
not sure how that would go.

You've gotta post again if you do this and let us know what exactly you did and how the results came out.

Hope I've been of some help.
Later.

------------------
~Fumbler
the crazied knife weilding Sarah McLachlan fan =)
 
About the Edge wearing down,
You could try putting a thin layer of epoxy over the edge.
Make sure you make it an even coat and make sure you dont get it on any parts of the blade that you want washed.
Oooh, you should put epoxy on the tang where it locks up and you might want to take two metal washers the size of the nylatron washers the knife uses, then bolt them, one on each side, with the bolt through the pivot hole so that you don't wear out that section of the blade or the pivot hole.

All this talk makes me want to go and take a blade and see what I can do with it. hehe

------------------
~Fumbler
the crazied knife weilding Sarah McLachlan fan =)
 
I called Microtech and Chris Reeve and was directed to their source of abrasives. I have the number at work and can post it later, but the bottom line is that there are hundreds of abrasives that are available. You have to pick shape, composition, grit, and size. Microtech uses a triangular white aluminum oxide synthetic stone with sides that are about 1" long. There are hundreds of different stones available, but I have to buy a 50 pound sack. The supplier suggested I try to get a quartz based crushed white rock and give it a try like fumbler did.

Lucky for me, I bought a container of used cheap stainless dinner knives so I have something to practice with. I know they are a lot softer than my 154CM blades, but they will be good for comparisons.

I think I am going to look for a tumbler for cleaning brass ammunition cases this weekend at the gun show. Maybe I'll get some more useful advice on stonewashing from the people there.


As far as the surface of the blade that contacts the nylatrol washer surface, if it gets a bit scuffed up does it matter? Won't the surface between the nylatrol washer and the handle slip instead and won't this work fine?

Thanks y'all and I will keep you informed.

Steve

------------------
Steven Reiter,
Lewisville, Texas
 
<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by SuperDuty Steven:


As far as the surface of the blade that contacts the nylatrol washer surface, if it gets a bit scuffed up does it matter? Won't the surface between the nylatrol washer and the handle slip instead and won't this work fine?


</font>
Click to expand...

It doesn't really matter if the blade gets finished there.
I was just thinking that you already have wear patterns on your blade and changing them could change the way your knife operates.
I doubt that it would actually have any impact on the fenction, but it'd still be a good idea to stick something in the pivot hole, you wouldn't want the edges of it burred from the stones.

------------------
~Fumbler
the crazied knife weilding Sarah McLachlan fan =)
 
Fumbler, you're right. It would be easy enough to find two correct sized washers, a bolt, and a locknut to put in the pivot hole before tossing the blade in the tumbler.

Ceramic chips? I have a ton of ceramic tile laying around. I could take a hammer and reduce a tile to thumbnail sized chips and try a blade like that. Instead of using the dryer, I could toss the bottle in the bed of my truck and drive around for a couple days...

Steve

------------------
Steven Reiter,
Lewisville, Texas
 
Thanks a lot for your patience replying to my dumb question !!! I am just happy
biggrin.gif
 
Try number one. I took a commercial grade ceramic tile and cut it into 3/4 inch squares and filled a 32 ounce Gatorade bottle half way with them. Then I added my knife blade and a drop of soap and filled it to the top with water. Wrapped it in 3 towels, tied it up, and tossed it in the dryer on spin cycle. After one and a half hours, I removed the blade and it has very fine tiny scratches all over it. I am going to try crushing some glass and repeating the procedure to get some longer scratches.

I wonder if safety glass will work?

Also, how about crushing the ceramic tile to get sharp and irregularly shaped pieces?

hmm...


Steve

------------------
Steven Reiter,
Lewisville, Texas
 
Going back to Bugs3x's finish descriptions of satin, bead blast, and stone wash, which is the best on high carbon steels? bead blast, parkerizing or stone wash when it comes to preventing rust? Sorry if I am a bit off subject but this is such an interesting topic.
smile.gif
 
UPDATE: I crushed one ceramic tile and placed it in my 32 ounce Gatorade bottle like my previous post and tossed it in the dryer for 30 minutes on "air fluff". It came out looking much better in terms of scratches than the tile squares I tried before. One thing that I did not clearly explain before was the ceramic squares left small "spots" or impact marks as opposed to scratches and scrapes. And there were very few of them as well.

I refilled my chip bottle with water and tossed it back in the dryer for another hour tonight. I hope to get 2 more cycles in before my wife comes home and gets mad when I try to repeat this with her here.

I think 2 and a half hours total time should be sufficient.

Steve

------------------
Steven Reiter,
Lewisville, Texas
 
Monster, the smoother the finish, the better it can resist rust. Satin would probably be best, with beadblasted the worst. If you keep your blade coated with a light coating of oil or water displacing "stuff", it will usually protect well.

I use Marine Tuf Cote, which is highly recommended here. If you are using the knife for food preparation, try using mineral oil instead.

Steve

------------------
Steven Reiter,
Lewisville, Texas
 
OK, got it out of the dryer after 2 and a half hours with the ceramic tile chips. Looks almost like a beadblasted finish, with markings less than a millimeter across.

The best word to describe it is frosted. It's like when you take a cold knife out of the fridge and expose it to hot humid air and a layer of condensation appears on it.

This is a good start, but I need to "scratch" the blade now...

I guess I need to try again with another bottle and something that will actually scratch the blade.

What's the best way to safely crush some glass?

Steve

------------------
Steven Reiter,
Lewisville, Texas
 
Upon further inspection, it has lots of very faint scratches, but they aren't as visible as they are on a Microtech LCC.

I need to scratch it with something harder now. Let me know what the easiest way to safely crush some glass is.

Will tempered glass work? I have an old glass sunroof laying around I could shatter.

Oh yeah, the edge is toast. Thank god for my Edge Pro...

Steve

------------------
Steven Reiter,
Lewisville, Texas
 
O.K you guys got my curiosity going.

I have a very badly worn benchmade 710 with the black coating. Most of the coating is scratched off so I decided to sand off the rest and then atempt to stonewash it.

It is in the dryer right now.

I used a 64 ounce gatorade bottle with about a half a cup of water a little soap and for the media I decided to use coins.

I only threw in a handfull because they were too heavy and beating the heck out of the dryer.

I will report the results as soon as I have them.

-Jeff
 
Steve

If your town is like mine, there is tons of broken safety glass just laying around at intersections.

Do your Civic duty and clean up a couple of shovels full late one night.
biggrin.gif


[This message has been edited by John Hollister (edited 06-26-2001).]
 
Don't use coins they make the knife look frosted.
I guess I will use the dremel and mirror polish the blade.
-Jeff
 
You guys are getting the impact/frosted look because the bottle is falling from the top of the dryer to the bottom and the medium is impacting the blade.
You can get rid of this look by using finer pieces of medium and filling the bottle completely with water.
doing this keeps the medium from falling fast enough to create impact marks.
You may also want to try thickening the mixture to slow down the medium movement, or adding a lot more of the medium.
I would try crushing up a lot of glass (go find some cheap glass drink bottles or something), enough to almost fill the entire bottle, so that it all doesn't move around too much.
Ideally you would stick the bottle in some kind of vibrating machine rather than a tossing machine (dryer).
If you guys have one of those vibrating sanders, you may want to try to attach it to the bottle somehow. That would give you nicer results.

It's nice to see you guys experimenting and letting us know the outcome.

------------------
~Fumbler
the crazied knife weilding Sarah McLachlan fan =)
 
I am going to shatter that old car sunroof tonight and fill the bottle with the pieces. We'll see how it works.

Steve

------------------
Steven Reiter,
Lewisville, Texas
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top