Khukuri patina photos
- Thread starter kookery
- Start date
check this one out:
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...ayan-Imports-Kukuri-s?p=10335833#post10335833
I used my WWII to cut up avocados and the greasy slime loosened a lot of stinky patina. My blade now looks cold gray, and is much more attractive now. It no longer leaves any darkening on foods or white towels when wiped off. It is also rust free when it gets wet. Before the avocados, the blade would start to turn orange or brown if it got wet for a while. My patina is now "hard and stable". I guess it's much more natural now too. It still looks the same, otherwise.
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...ayan-Imports-Kukuri-s?p=10335833#post10335833
I used my WWII to cut up avocados and the greasy slime loosened a lot of stinky patina. My blade now looks cold gray, and is much more attractive now. It no longer leaves any darkening on foods or white towels when wiped off. It is also rust free when it gets wet. Before the avocados, the blade would start to turn orange or brown if it got wet for a while. My patina is now "hard and stable". I guess it's much more natural now too. It still looks the same, otherwise.
That pumpkin patina is gorgeous, Shinook. Do you have more photos of that? It looks to be an even golden color. Does it change in different lighting?
I added some photos of how my patina has aged, here:
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...-Imports-resale-value?p=11570034#post11570034
I put some more description of it here:
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...-Imports-resale-value?p=11573985#post11573985
It shimmers with different colors now.
I added some photos of how my patina has aged, here:
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...-Imports-resale-value?p=11570034#post11570034
I put some more description of it here:
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...-Imports-resale-value?p=11573985#post11573985
It shimmers with different colors now.
I soaked my 25" Kumar Kobra in vinegar for 8 hours yesterday. Here is the result. Kind of reminds me of the swords Zombie Tools are selling with the worn apocalyptic look.
It's actually darker than in the pic and video. The camera light make it brighter than it actually is.
Video:
It's actually darker than in the pic and video. The camera light make it brighter than it actually is.
Video:
Got a good patina on my Gelbu Special cutting up a watermelon.
The pistol is a 1930's era Colt Model M in .380 that I failed in refinishing previously. I'll talk about why as we get to that stage.
Overall the process is pretty simple to do with stuff from Home Depot and can easily be done in your kitchen. This pistol was blued in my kitchen and took about 2 hours end to end. The big variable in time is the amount of metal work you want to do to the gun to be blued. I did very little metal work during this refinish which kept the timeframe down.
Materials required:
Tap Water
3-4-5 bottles of Stump Remover (depends on the container you have available to do the blue in, you need enough to cover all the parts)
White Vinegar
WD 40
Before pictures: http://imgur.com/a/ZBNhF
Notice the silver splotches where the previous blue didn't fully take.
Step 1: Detail strip and basic cleanup. Take everything ALL the way apart. Anything you don't take apart WILL get salt molten in it and it may be substantially more difficult to take apart after bluing. You also want to remove all the springs you don't want blued. Clean the parts, they don't have to be spotless but get the big stuff off. Don't bother oiling anything. I put these parts through the sonic cleaner with a degreaser for one cycle, that was sufficient.
http://i.imgur.com/tjabSAt.jpg
Step 2: Vinegar Soak the parts to be blued. This will strip any blue off the parts. Anything you don't want to blue (such as springs) just set aside until we get to reassembly. Mix up a 50/50 white vinegar and tap water mix and put the parts in it and let soak for 90 mins or however long it takes to remove the old blue.
http://imgur.com/a/24xxd
After about an hour in the vinegar, old blue is gone: http://imgur.com/a/Kct2f
Step 3 Boil the parts in plain tap water for 20 mins. This is the step I missed last time that caused the finish to be so poor. Nitre blue does NOT color active rust so the silver spots from the last refinish was in places where there was active corrosion, it didn't look active to the eye but deep in the pits there was active rust. Boiling the parts converts FeO2 (red rust) into FeO3 (black rust) which is much more stable. Once the boil is complete turn off power to the stove, pull the parts out hot and towel dry them, the heat in the parts will evaporate the water very quickly.
Boiled parts: http://imgur.com/a/UjgGi
Step 4 Metal Prep. Not going to go into too much detail here, the sky is the limit at this point. All I did for the pistol in the picture is a quick clean up with 600 grit sandpaper. For guns with significant pitting, you may want to start with as aggressive as 180 grit sandpaper. I typically work up to 2,000 grit paper before a final buff on a buffing wheel, this will give you a mirror like gloss blue finish. Anything you see in the metal after prep, you will see in the final blue
Quick and dirty metal prep: http://i.imgur.com/vvjOfBu.jpg Notice, I left significant pitting and rough finish in this pistol. I could buff this perfect if I wanted to.
Step 5 Melt your nitre solution. I used 4 bottles of Spectracide Stump Remover. This is powdered salt peter. This will take a while, be patient, it melts at about 400 degrees F. You want a clear yellow solution once all melted. WARNING - THIS IS VERY HOT AND YOU DO NOT WANT TO COME IN CONTACT WITH THE MOLTEN SALT. Take basic care to not be an idiot, think through what you are doing, DONT RUSH, wear long sleeves, gloves, shoes and jeans.
Melted salt: http://imgur.com/a/2GcOz
Step 6 Put your parts in the salt. Spend some time to swirl the mixture with your tongs, make sure they are good and warm so that when you use them to put parts into the salt, the salt doesn't cool off and harden around the parts and tongs together. If that does happen, it's no big deal, just don't try and jerk them out or force them apart, wait for everything to heat up and the salt to melt, and slowly take your tongs out. This shouldn't be a big deal if you are wearing an oven glove, if you're not wearing something over your hands they will become uncomfortably hot in about 10-15 seconds.
MAKE SURE THE PARTS ARE BONE DRY Any water will instantly boil once it comes in contact with the molten salt and could get violent and injure you. Other than that, it is pretty simple but take your time, don't splash the salt, that shit is no-joke, wreck-your-day-hot. I use tongs to set things into the salt. Space things out a bit, don't just dump everything into the pot at once. It is OK to lay things flat against the bottom of the container.
The solution shouldn't be boiling or really doing anything other than being hot and covering the parts completely.
Give it about 5 minutes before you really start to criticize what the parts look like. When you put the gun parts un the solution the salt will solidify on to the parts because they are cold, as the parts warm up the salt will melt again. You will notice small bubbles on the surface of the parts as it continues to get more and more hot. Once the part is fully up to the temp of the salt (which may take a while (10 mins or so) there should be no bubbles on the surface of the part. I frequently grab parts with the tongs and swirl around in the salt, dunk it in and out of the salt, and tap it against the edge of the container just to make sure all the little bubbles are off the parts and you have even temp across the parts.
I left these parts in for about 30 mins. The time you leave parts in the solution is a bit of an art. The length of time in the solution determines the color and depth of color. You can watch parts go from straw, to purple, to blue, to black over time depending on time and temperature. Experiment and find what you like. With Colts I like to go for this Royal Blue looking blue that I got out of this and the 1911 I showed a while back.
Parts in the salt: http://i.imgur.com/19eTlog.jpg
Step 7 Take parts directly from the salt and dunk immediately into tap water. Some people will air dry parts at this point, you may choose to do that, I do not. It doesn't make a difference really other than going from the hot salt solution into water drastically simplifies the process of cleaning off hardened salt from blued parts. Doing it this way leaves no salt residue what so ever on the parts. If you do have a salt deposit somewhere just run the part under warm water until it dissolves away. The hot parts will cause the water to boil, hiss and steam as you put parts in until they cool off enough, this usually takes 2-3 seconds. If your tongs get wet make 100% certain they are completely dry before you put them back into the salt to grab the next part. Towel dry is insufficient for this task, use a towel, then stick them in the flame of the burner for a few seconds to burn off any water vapor.
Parts quenched and sitting in water: http://imgur.com/a/znrmT
Step 8 Rinse and WD-40 parts, let cure for a while. Yes, WD-40. This is literally what it is designed for, WD stands for "Water Displacing". Take the parts out of the quench tub one at a time and run them under the tap to make sure all the salt dissolved away. After the parts are rinsed off, DOUSE them in WD-40 to displace water off the parts, keep them well coated in WD40 for about an hour, spritz them every once in a while and just make sure they parts look 'wet' with WD40.
Let the parts sit covered in WD40 for at least an hour. After that time you can wipe off the WD-40 and oil with your choice of gun oil.
If you don't get what you wanted out of the blue, or there are splotches in your parts you can go back to step 2 again and remove the blue with the vinegar. You can skip step 3 unless you think the issues in your finish are because there is still active rust somewhere. Step 4 is usually pretty short the second time around as most of the hard work is done the first time. I find usually a polish with 2,000 grit and a buff is sufficient .
Parts coated in WD-40 curing: http://imgur.com/a/d4s9c
Step 9 Reassemble. You are complete.
Done: http://imgur.com/a/idi1i
The pistol is a 1930's era Colt Model M in .380 that I failed in refinishing previously. I'll talk about why as we get to that stage.
Overall the process is pretty simple to do with stuff from Home Depot and can easily be done in your kitchen. This pistol was blued in my kitchen and took about 2 hours end to end. The big variable in time is the amount of metal work you want to do to the gun to be blued. I did very little metal work during this refinish which kept the timeframe down.
Materials required:
Tap Water
3-4-5 bottles of Stump Remover (depends on the container you have available to do the blue in, you need enough to cover all the parts)
White Vinegar
WD 40
Before pictures: http://imgur.com/a/ZBNhF
Notice the silver splotches where the previous blue didn't fully take.
Step 1: Detail strip and basic cleanup. Take everything ALL the way apart. Anything you don't take apart WILL get salt molten in it and it may be substantially more difficult to take apart after bluing. You also want to remove all the springs you don't want blued. Clean the parts, they don't have to be spotless but get the big stuff off. Don't bother oiling anything. I put these parts through the sonic cleaner with a degreaser for one cycle, that was sufficient.
http://i.imgur.com/tjabSAt.jpg
Step 2: Vinegar Soak the parts to be blued. This will strip any blue off the parts. Anything you don't want to blue (such as springs) just set aside until we get to reassembly. Mix up a 50/50 white vinegar and tap water mix and put the parts in it and let soak for 90 mins or however long it takes to remove the old blue.
http://imgur.com/a/24xxd
After about an hour in the vinegar, old blue is gone: http://imgur.com/a/Kct2f
Step 3 Boil the parts in plain tap water for 20 mins. This is the step I missed last time that caused the finish to be so poor. Nitre blue does NOT color active rust so the silver spots from the last refinish was in places where there was active corrosion, it didn't look active to the eye but deep in the pits there was active rust. Boiling the parts converts FeO2 (red rust) into FeO3 (black rust) which is much more stable. Once the boil is complete turn off power to the stove, pull the parts out hot and towel dry them, the heat in the parts will evaporate the water very quickly.
Boiled parts: http://imgur.com/a/UjgGi
Step 4 Metal Prep. Not going to go into too much detail here, the sky is the limit at this point. All I did for the pistol in the picture is a quick clean up with 600 grit sandpaper. For guns with significant pitting, you may want to start with as aggressive as 180 grit sandpaper. I typically work up to 2,000 grit paper before a final buff on a buffing wheel, this will give you a mirror like gloss blue finish. Anything you see in the metal after prep, you will see in the final blue
Quick and dirty metal prep: http://i.imgur.com/vvjOfBu.jpg Notice, I left significant pitting and rough finish in this pistol. I could buff this perfect if I wanted to.
Step 5 Melt your nitre solution. I used 4 bottles of Spectracide Stump Remover. This is powdered salt peter. This will take a while, be patient, it melts at about 400 degrees F. You want a clear yellow solution once all melted. WARNING - THIS IS VERY HOT AND YOU DO NOT WANT TO COME IN CONTACT WITH THE MOLTEN SALT. Take basic care to not be an idiot, think through what you are doing, DONT RUSH, wear long sleeves, gloves, shoes and jeans.
Melted salt: http://imgur.com/a/2GcOz
Step 6 Put your parts in the salt. Spend some time to swirl the mixture with your tongs, make sure they are good and warm so that when you use them to put parts into the salt, the salt doesn't cool off and harden around the parts and tongs together. If that does happen, it's no big deal, just don't try and jerk them out or force them apart, wait for everything to heat up and the salt to melt, and slowly take your tongs out. This shouldn't be a big deal if you are wearing an oven glove, if you're not wearing something over your hands they will become uncomfortably hot in about 10-15 seconds.
MAKE SURE THE PARTS ARE BONE DRY Any water will instantly boil once it comes in contact with the molten salt and could get violent and injure you. Other than that, it is pretty simple but take your time, don't splash the salt, that shit is no-joke, wreck-your-day-hot. I use tongs to set things into the salt. Space things out a bit, don't just dump everything into the pot at once. It is OK to lay things flat against the bottom of the container.
The solution shouldn't be boiling or really doing anything other than being hot and covering the parts completely.
Give it about 5 minutes before you really start to criticize what the parts look like. When you put the gun parts un the solution the salt will solidify on to the parts because they are cold, as the parts warm up the salt will melt again. You will notice small bubbles on the surface of the parts as it continues to get more and more hot. Once the part is fully up to the temp of the salt (which may take a while (10 mins or so) there should be no bubbles on the surface of the part. I frequently grab parts with the tongs and swirl around in the salt, dunk it in and out of the salt, and tap it against the edge of the container just to make sure all the little bubbles are off the parts and you have even temp across the parts.
I left these parts in for about 30 mins. The time you leave parts in the solution is a bit of an art. The length of time in the solution determines the color and depth of color. You can watch parts go from straw, to purple, to blue, to black over time depending on time and temperature. Experiment and find what you like. With Colts I like to go for this Royal Blue looking blue that I got out of this and the 1911 I showed a while back.
Parts in the salt: http://i.imgur.com/19eTlog.jpg
Step 7 Take parts directly from the salt and dunk immediately into tap water. Some people will air dry parts at this point, you may choose to do that, I do not. It doesn't make a difference really other than going from the hot salt solution into water drastically simplifies the process of cleaning off hardened salt from blued parts. Doing it this way leaves no salt residue what so ever on the parts. If you do have a salt deposit somewhere just run the part under warm water until it dissolves away. The hot parts will cause the water to boil, hiss and steam as you put parts in until they cool off enough, this usually takes 2-3 seconds. If your tongs get wet make 100% certain they are completely dry before you put them back into the salt to grab the next part. Towel dry is insufficient for this task, use a towel, then stick them in the flame of the burner for a few seconds to burn off any water vapor.
Parts quenched and sitting in water: http://imgur.com/a/znrmT
Step 8 Rinse and WD-40 parts, let cure for a while. Yes, WD-40. This is literally what it is designed for, WD stands for "Water Displacing". Take the parts out of the quench tub one at a time and run them under the tap to make sure all the salt dissolved away. After the parts are rinsed off, DOUSE them in WD-40 to displace water off the parts, keep them well coated in WD40 for about an hour, spritz them every once in a while and just make sure they parts look 'wet' with WD40.
Let the parts sit covered in WD40 for at least an hour. After that time you can wipe off the WD-40 and oil with your choice of gun oil.
If you don't get what you wanted out of the blue, or there are splotches in your parts you can go back to step 2 again and remove the blue with the vinegar. You can skip step 3 unless you think the issues in your finish are because there is still active rust somewhere. Step 4 is usually pretty short the second time around as most of the hard work is done the first time. I find usually a polish with 2,000 grit and a buff is sufficient .
Parts coated in WD-40 curing: http://imgur.com/a/d4s9c
Step 9 Reassemble. You are complete.
Done: http://imgur.com/a/idi1i
tinfoil hat timmy
Gold Member
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- Aug 21, 2014
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- 18,522
Blood works very well. Lots of blues and yellows. Don't wash it off right away, and use dish soap when you do
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- Dec 5, 2012
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- 4,076
ouch!
Bawanna
Moderator
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- Dec 19, 2012
- Messages
- 10,280
This weren't nothing, I spent 3 hours nailed to a piece of base trim. Usually had a pair of side cutters in my tool bags but was finishing up and my bags were about 10 ft away.
Went through my finger and into the wood. Couldn't pull loose without major damage to my finger and the new carpet. Had to wait till my partner showed up.
The worst part is he laughed, can you imagine.
Went through my finger and into the wood. Couldn't pull loose without major damage to my finger and the new carpet. Had to wait till my partner showed up.
The worst part is he laughed, can you imagine.
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2006
- Messages
- 1,840
Brother, I know of what you speak. I already told you of taking the end of my finger off while using the bench polisher. I'm a bleeder. By the time the bride got home it looked like a slaughter house/murder scene. White carpet, still living it down.
Bawanna's experience reminds me of a book that I just read. I won't mention the name of the book, since this would be a bad spoiler. Please, no one else mention it.
In the story, a young woman is involved in a fight to the death in an abandoned factory with a huge, hulking, powerful man. He is three times her size and a killer; she is totally outmatched physically, but she is quick and smart. There are no weapons at hand, just a few tools strewn around the place.
Briefly taking refuge under a heavy workbench, she ends up nailing the guy's feet to the floor with a nailgun. Five or six nails in each foot, criss-crossed at angles so he would have to tear his feet to pieces to pull free.
It does not end well for him.
In the story, a young woman is involved in a fight to the death in an abandoned factory with a huge, hulking, powerful man. He is three times her size and a killer; she is totally outmatched physically, but she is quick and smart. There are no weapons at hand, just a few tools strewn around the place.
Briefly taking refuge under a heavy workbench, she ends up nailing the guy's feet to the floor with a nailgun. Five or six nails in each foot, criss-crossed at angles so he would have to tear his feet to pieces to pull free.
It does not end well for him.
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2013
- Messages
- 1,730
Ridden this Mk. 1 from thamar hard, took a nice patina and I touched it up with some gun bluing to even it out a bit, I dig it!
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2015
- Messages
- 712
I really hope you are okay! That's not a funny situation to be in, but I gotta admit I laughed a little at the thought of a guy with his finger nailed to the wall and his cutters just out of reach.
You can tell I was raised on some Tom and Jerry.
Get well soon!
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2015
- Messages
- 712
I meant I hope your finger is okay, I sort of noticed the head was iffy...