Marking steel

J

John L

Joined
Oct 28, 2004
Messages
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I make folders primarily. I am constantly marking, normally with a Sharpie or some such. But these pens work only on clean steel..ie..no oil or grease, no water. Heat erases it, etc. Is there an alternative other than Dykem, which works for initail layout, but a pain to constantly repaint. I assemble the folder, check tolerances, mark, grind, assemble, check, mark, grind, etc. This happens many, many times for one folder. Leave the top off a Sharpie for ten minutes and you have to reactivate with thinner. What else is there? Thanks.
 
I sometimes use a scribe, I heard some people blacken the metal with a long acetylene flame prior to marking. chalk and soapstone would be too crude for folder finishing. I have no idea other than the fine sharpee.
 
Go to a place like Fastenall ,Grainger,or other industrial supplier. Near the counter there will be a display of paint markers.They come in a variety of tip sizes and colors. The white and black will go on most any reasonably clean steel. The plus is that the white markers will stay on even through HT on stainless blades (the black does too, but not as good). The white has Titanium Di-oxide as a pigment, which survives well.

Sharpies and magic markers are great for drawing up profiles and marking areas you are grinding on, but they will rub off and heat will wipe them out. Paint markers will hold up. The ones at K-mart (in the crafts area) work nearly as well as the ones from Fastenall.

When you get a piece of steel mark both sides of both ends. Sure you know it is 1080, or S30V NOW, but NEXT YEAR will you be able to tell? Never rely on the paint color of the bar end as a indicator. It varies from company to company and sometimes means nothing at all.

When you are working on a blade write the important things on the blade tang. By marking the blade when it is ground, I can set it aside for six months and still know all I need to by just a glance. I mark the tang with metal type, customer name, and any other info. After HT the marks are just fine.
Often,I mark the HT info,too. This is especially important when you get a bar of damascus from someone, as they can have quite a variety of metal mixes and HT specs.

Stacy
 
nice tips..
a lot of the times I use layout blue (Die Chem) and use a Carbide scribe
I also mark my steel when I get it in with a sharpie, but as it gets cut up I'll use one of those cheap vibrating engraves and lable the steel in a place where it will get ground off and once it's becoming a knife I'll mark the tangs as needed with the engraver also...
 
have you tried the newer industrial sharpies. they are not as good as i had expected them on some things but they might hold up well, supposedly can withstand 500*F steam, most cleaners, and uv

-matt
 
Thanks to all. I bought a couple of paint markers, extra fine tips and they work great.
 
When I was in industry we used to use, 'metal markers', like a toothpaste tube with a rollerball nib. pretty crude but it worked well on large plates and was still slightly visible after heat treating. Probably too crude for a knife. For finer stuff we used to use 'engineering blue' which I imagine is the same stuff Dan refers to, and scribed on it with a 'scribe' (which was effectively an old tap ground to a round sharp tip. This works like a bomb cos its a good hard steel for it.) Not sure how it handles heat, but a moderately oily surface is still workable.

Lang
 
I cut out a lot of broadheads from old circular saws, sometimes with a lot of surface rust. I use white glue and glue a piece of paper over the whole surface, and draw my patterns out. this will hold up to grinding, abrasive wheels, cold chisel, or any thing else I have done. The paper can be removed with a soak in water, or through it in the forge and burn it off when your heat treating.
 
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