Why don't we see many gun-blue knives?

Some of the bigger Anzas are blued. My Dune Field and Dune Slayer have blued finishes. It is not real durable, but the color is not too different from the underlying patinated file metal.
 
bluing in the old days was simply using boiling water to do the work for you...

(boiling gets rid of the oxygen, and the heat does the bluing -> converting the red oxide Fe2O3 (rust) to black oxide Fe3O4

Bluing (steel) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

...
personally, I love this process, old fashioned, simple, and very effective for rust prevention - no chemicals involved really (you can force rust easily with salty water)

imho, best to just do it yourself, - this is literally the best use of a workhorse carbon mora (imho)
 
Guns are not intended to be scratched where as knives via use and sharpening inevitably will be. Old worn looking gunds look great to me as do my old knives, but I prefer blade materials that scratch without revealing a new color, just my preference. A case hardened blade would be very cool, not sure of the compromise.
 
I'm not familar with folders that may have been blued but since most folders I am aware of are Stainless, that may be why.
SOG is one company that offered Blued blades on their SOG S1 (Hattori) and Recon Bowie (Top Two in phooto), Government Recon S21 and
Midnight Tigetshark (Kinryu). All these used SK5. The original Vietnam era MACV-SOG knives were SK3 and most were blued.
These blued models ended when SOG switched to Taiwan manufacture in 2006 and went with black TiNi finish on Aus8.
f8taBY.jpg
 
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Just pick up some cold bluing from Midway and find yourself an old carbon steel blade and try it yourself.
I have a 50 year old Schrade Old Timer on the desk in front of me right now that I cold blued shortly after I bought it.

The blue is gone but it has a nice patina.
 
Closest I’ve seen to traditional bluing on a modern knife blade is the finish on my son’s new Spyderco Tuff.
 
Luftig said:
Guns are not intended to be scratched where as knives via use and sharpening inevitably will be. Old worn looking gunds look great to me as do my old knives, but I prefer blade materials that scratch without revealing a new color, just my preference. A case hardened blade would be very cool, not sure of the compromise.
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What happens when you use actually used guns, holster/unholster/reholster a pistol, etc.? Scratches! Scuffs! Dings!
 
That's why all my wheelguns are in stainless...
Practically speaking: the finishes on today's knives are actually much tougher than simple gun blueing...
 
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The Aflac Duck said:
FWIW- DLC will not produce a new finish, just coat it. If you polish a blade and DLC it, you get a polished DLC finish.
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Yes, you can DLC over a polished blade; ProTech is the only one I can think of who does it on production knives. Most just put it on over regular belt satin or blasted finish. Which you can do with bluing, but you end up with a much different look than the usual polished blue finish. Given how much better DLC is, in terms of durability and corrosion resistance, I don't see many people wanting anything other than the high polish blue.

dirc said:
bluing in the old days was simply using boiling water to do the work for you...

(boiling gets rid of the oxygen, and the heat does the bluing -> converting the red oxide Fe2O3 (rust) to black oxide Fe3O4

Bluing (steel) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

...
personally, I love this process, old fashioned, simple, and very effective for rust prevention - no chemicals involved really (you can force rust easily with salty water)

imho, best to just do it yourself, - this is literally the best use of a workhorse carbon mora (imho)
Click to expand...
Old-fashioned rust bluing involves a preliminary step of forcing rust on the metal with acid. You can't just throw a piece of metal into boiling water.
 
Generally speaking Gun parts ( slides in particular) are not using very special steels as the modern knife blades. Bluing knife blades have two major issues:
Type of steel and heat treatment.
If your knife blade is more of the stainless steel it will not blue good. Of course exceptions exist...
If you go to process as Tenifer/Melonite ( same "salt bath"), you will have really excellent protection but those processes involve lots of heat and this will probably affect the hardness of the blade...
Again, there are exceptions of every rule...
DLC is a very thin coating that have almost the same hardness as the Tenifer/Melonite and does not involve heat, IMO this would be ideal for knife blade coating if it didn't have the specific gray/dark gray coloring...
I personally have no problem with it but some people prefer satin or natural metal color on their blades so...
As the Gentleman noted in one of the previous posts - you can polish the metal and apply DLC and you'll have polished DLS coating, looks very attractive IMO.
Razor Edge Knives is one guy that I know, that does DLC with great success, they are lots of other companies that does it too but it takes months if you lucky to get on those lists.
So Gun Bluing usually goes on slides and the metal isn't really stainless steel, Glock for example uses 4140 carbon steel for their slides and barrels and this steel would require solid protection,
something the old Tenifer process delivered. I know because of safety regulations they changed the process with something similar few years back, If I remember correctly since Gen 5,
and the new process is not very consistent as uniform black color, but the actual Tenifer is silver in color and it is under the dark "bluing" which is done during the "salt bath"
I personally wouldn't care for "blue" knife blade but some of them are looking very good, as the SOG Recon Bowie Mr Hash showed in his outstanding display... :cool: :thumbsup:

tHYAc9.jpg


dcX3tN.jpg
 
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OrangeBlueOrangeBlue said:
Yes, you can DLC over a polished blade; ProTech is the only one I can think of who does it on production knives. Most just put it on over regular belt satin or blasted finish. Which you can do with bluing, but you end up with a much different look than the usual polished blue finish. Given how much better DLC is, in terms of durability and corrosion resistance, I don't see many people wanting anything other than the high polish blue.


Old-fashioned rust bluing involves a preliminary step of forcing rust on the metal with acid. You can't just throw a piece of metal into boiling water.
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Or just salt water, you really don't need to overcomplicate it with acid
 
I made this knife over 40 years ago. The blade is blued. It got quite a bit of use for a few years until I could afford something better.

4eblUwt.jpg


There are knives out there with blued blades. There's a couple lines of kitchen knives with blued blades, and they are not cheap. It's just not something most people look for.
 
Zulus said:
Ha ha ha ha ...
Blueing guns IS FOR STEEL PROTECTON only !!
Not for your pleasure !
For Centuriws now ...
Click to expand...
Ha ha ha ha
And THERE’S BETTER OPTIONS nowadays!!

Fact…

I give you exhibit A,
a W49 I was given by a friend’s family after cancer finally got him.

 
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I always thought case hardening would be a good alternative,but i think its an expensive process.Electrolessing i thought as another interesting option in a matte finish silver....
 
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