Removing markings and print from blades?

J

JTC

Joined
Dec 22, 2002
Messages
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Does anyone know how to remove the print from a blade like is on a Benchmade satin finish blade? It appears to be silkscreened or put on with some sort of color but not etched into the surface. It seems there would be some sort of cleaner that would take it right off without sanding it. Thanks for the input! :)


John
 
Paint remover might be worth a try.

After you're done, clean with acetone and then oil well.

But at the end of the day you'll more likely than not have to sand lightly to really get the print out.
 
JTC said:
Does anyone know how to remove the print from a blade like is on a Benchmade satin finish blade? It appears to be silkscreened or put on with some sort of color but not etched into the surface. It seems there would be some sort of cleaner that would take it right off without sanding it. Thanks for the input! :)


John
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No. There is no easy way. I've polished maybe 6 or 7 blades that had text on them and on each of them, the text had made kind of an impression into the steel of the blade - slight (not measurable), but still an impression. It took considerable effort with a dremil tool and polishing compound to get it out. On a couple, I actually managed to get the blade as shiney as I wanted it and could still see the text a little bit.

NOTE: ALL of these blades were of beadblast finish. I don't know if that has any bearing on these facts or not.

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The black print on a satin finished plain carbon steel blade usually comes out with little difficulty. Just use a fine paste polish like flitz and focus on that area of the blade a bit more than the rest, and over time it'll fade to nothing. Pay very close attention to that benchmade etch though, on my 710 Axis (and many other high grade stainless knives) the etch is done with a laser, and so it leaves a very (relatively speaking) deep etch that will still show up no matter how much you polish it by hand, the only way to remove that would be to refinish the whole blade using abrasives.

Look at it with a loupe or other high magnification device, it should be pretty easy to see if the etch has small grooves or dots that go below the surface.
 
yoda4561 said:
The black print on a satin finished plain carbon steel blade usually comes out with little difficulty. Just use a fine paste polish like flitz and focus on that area of the blade a bit more than the rest, and over time it'll fade to nothing. Pay very close attention to that benchmade etch though, on my 710 Axis (and many other high grade stainless knives) the etch is done with a laser, and so it leaves a very (relatively speaking) deep etch that will still show up no matter how much you polish it by hand, the only way to remove that would be to refinish the whole blade using abrasives.
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Have you actually done this before with Flitz?
Flitz does MOST of it's polishing chemically and it's only a VERY mild abrasive. I think he would be there for a month trying to polish it off with Flitz. Unless you've actually done it before...

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Yes, I have :) It easily removes cold gun blue, and even the factory hot blueing if you're aggressive enough. Simichrome is a similar polish but an order of magnitude finer, that will still remove thin chemical surface etches. When they say it's non-abrasive, that's not an absolute, there is an extremely fine abrasive in it, though it's quite mild in comparison to something like Chrome Polish from the auto-store. IMO, only 10 percent of the cleaning action is really chemical, the rest relies on the abrasives to remove the surface oxides and a tiny bit of the base metal in order to make it shiny :) Some etches are tougher than others of course, on my Cold Steel Twistmaster a few months of very light and careful polish faded the etch to almost nothing, and the Trailmaster's etch came off just from one very light polish. I no longer polish any etched carbon steel blades because of this, they get wiped down with a cotton rag and light oil and that keeps them looking just fine. On that note, did you know that cleaner-paste car wax has enough abrasive to knock off light etching too? I like to use it on brass items when I put them in storage, it takes off any light surface oxidation and also protects better than any oil-type protectant I've ever tried.
 
A super fine 3M Cratex wheel will take it off but unless you are very experienced with it you will leave tell tale signs of it being there. If done right you can blend into the finish to make it look like the writing was never there but depending on how highly polished it is you may need to go over the whole blade with the wheel to make it look uniform. I'd recommend practice on a cheapy knife or two before trying it. If the blade you are working on is mirror polished forget it. It works best on a brushed type of finish for the best blending and uniform appearance.
 
Benchmades are laser-etched. It's really not practical to remove the markings.


Flitz, by the way, is a non-abrasive polish. Any "grit" that you feel in it is a material that is significantly softer than even silver or brass which are significantly softer than blade steel. So you will get absolutely no abrasive effect from Flitz on blade steel.
 
yoda4561 said:
Yes, I have :) It easily removes cold gun blue, and even the factory hot blueing if you're aggressive enough. Simichrome is a similar polish but an order of magnitude finer, that will still remove thin chemical surface etches. When they say it's non-abrasive, that's not an absolute, there is an extremely fine abrasive in it, though it's quite mild in comparison to something like Chrome Polish from the auto-store. IMO, only 10 percent of the cleaning action is really chemical, the rest relies on the abrasives to remove the surface oxides and a tiny bit of the base metal in order to make it shiny :) Some etches are tougher than others of course, on my Cold Steel Twistmaster a few months of very light and careful polish faded the etch to almost nothing, and the Trailmaster's etch came off just from one very light polish. I no longer polish any etched carbon steel blades because of this, they get wiped down with a cotton rag and light oil and that keeps them looking just fine. On that note, did you know that cleaner-paste car wax has enough abrasive to knock off light etching too? I like to use it on brass items when I put them in storage, it takes off any light surface oxidation and also protects better than any oil-type protectant I've ever tried.
Click to expand...

OK, but if the etching is deep...
He might want to use a compound.

Flitz also makes a heck of a splattery mess when used with a Dremil.
I've found that it's really good as a finish-up after you polish with something with more grit to it first.
 
It won't visibly scratch steel that I've seen, but it does leave extremely fine swirl marks in mirror polished brass and softer metals, you can see them under direct lighting. That's sort of a moot point though, there aren't many finer or less harsh abrasives out there for use on such a wide array of materials.
 
If the etching is deep enough then yeah, for immediate removal a coarser compound might work, but it also has the potential to visibly scratch the steel surface itself, not recommended unless you know exactly what you're doing. The laser etched benchmades are too deep even for that, you'd need to remove a signifigant amount of metal to get past the etch depth, and it's almost impossible to "blend" it into the rest of the blade so it isn't noticable.
 
As people above have mentioned, it is done with a laser. I've been able to buff the mark off, but it still leaves a shadow where it was. Refinishing is the only way to go.

BTW, why do you want them gone? I took over a week to make sure the logo went back!

normal_afck-final1.jpg


http://www.2smrt4u.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=2
 
Well I was actually looking at a Benchmade offsider at the local gun shop and it had alot of print on the blade. I thought it would look better with a "cleaner" look to it. It has a very fine bead blast finish on it from what I can tell. If you used any kind of polish or abrasive material it seems like you would have to do the entire blade. The print has the same color of pencil lead. It may be laser etched as well. It was a very nice looking knife with a very comfortable handle.


John
 
Sorry to bring this back from the dead, but the Scotch-Brite suggestion did a great job in removing the markings from the side of my inexpensive Cold Steel Roach Belly knife. you can still see the ghost of the writing, but the writing is no longer visible enough to trouble my wife if I use it to cut food with it.
 
My honest opinion is just leave it alone, unless you plan on sanding and putting a new finish on the entire blade, because you won't be able to remove it while leaving the blade looking exactly how the factory finish is. There will always be a spot you can notice on the blade where you can see the different scratch pattern on that spot you sanded. Either go whole hog and take some sanding paper to the entire blade or leave it alone.
 
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