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Ed Caffrey's Workshop Talk to Ed Caffrey ... The Montana Bladesmith! Tips, tricks and more from an ABS Mastersmith.

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Old 08-26-2004, 01:41 PM
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jonwelder jonwelder is offline
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Question "More" steel coloring questions for Ed --

Dear Ed, I have a piece of canned steel made from powdered 1084 and nickel sheet, it was dipped in "nitre blue" and came out a beautiful dark blue with silver designs. I'm making a damascus knife and I want to make the guard and pommel the same way, (nitre blue) with some silver highlites. I've been doing some experminting with pressed forklift chain and chain saw chain, dipped in nitre blue. They came out wierd, lots of different colors, even some copper shades, and only some faint tints of blue. I cleaned them up and dipped 2nd time, same results. My question: I can only assume that the dark blue came from the 1084, and the steels in the chains are totally different, (?) They look cool in their on way,, but just not the desired effect. I'm still trying to figure out the picture posting thing, or I'd post pictures! thanks Ed!!! ---jon
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Old 08-26-2004, 04:01 PM
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Ed Caffrey Ed Caffrey is offline
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That's the tough part about using recycled materials......you never know what your dealing with as far as alloy content goes. The color variations are a direct result of the various materials contained in the items.
About the only way you can achieve predictability is to blue various alloys/mixes (knowing what the alloys truely are) and record the results for reference.

This is the basic reason(s) that I don't offer wire damascus or "chain" blades any more. Even though I have the alloys list in Oregon brand chainsaw bars and chains, it doesn't help because every now and then they change their sources for chains/bars, and along with that comes differing alloys.

I think most bladesmiths go through the phase early in their careers about using recycled/scrap materials in order to save $$. What we learn after a while is that we are really spinning our wheels because we have no predictability from blade to blade.... and in most cases we achieve mush less than we could if the alloy(s) were know.


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Old 08-26-2004, 04:16 PM
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Thumbs up Ed,, You'r right!

It IS early in MY knife-making career! But I enjoy making something out of junk! And those cool designs the pins in the chain makes, along with being able to identify the cutters in the saw chain... But you'r right,, it's better to stay with new materials so that colors can be duplicated, and carbon contents can be identified! Seems so amazing that materials like different chains can be forged back into a solid! A black-smithing "hoot" --jon
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