Finish and Polish for Knives

Can anyone recommend a resin for making Micarta that stays clear and won't darken your starting material after it drys?

I'm going to be hand-filing/sanding my first blade in a few days, and it got me thinking a lot about sandpaper grits. My question is: What grit is fine enough for you? How far do you sand a blade, how far do you sand a handle? What do you think is the minimum grit something needs to look decent? What do you think is the maximum grit something needs before it gets extraneous?

Hello everyone! i have a question that I can’t seem to find the answer to. I have done my first pattern welded knife, and I am confused by the etchant portion. I’ll attach a picture of the knife that I etched in instant coffee. I know that I need to get some ferric chloride to get the texture that I want, but there doesn’t seem to be specific information about how to mix the ferric chloride solution so I will get a proper etch. As you may know, ferric chloride is available in all sorts of forms. You can buy it dry, and mix your own solution. You can buy it from various places pre-mixed in a number of different ratios. 43%, 60%, etc. Also, I don’t know wha…

Hello, newbie here working on my second knife. The first was a practice knife made from a file, and I left the finish rougher as I wanted to retain the file lines. This one is a wedding gift for a friend of my mother's, and while it will likely be a heavily used knife, I wanted to deliver it with a nicer finish since it's a gift. It's a Baby Bowie made from 5160 leaf spring steel. It's mostly done (hardened, edged, handle attached and shaped), but I still have to polish the blade and sand and finish the handle. I hoped to get it there on my belt grinder, but I realize now that I hadn't done the proper research yet. Now I'm trying to figure out how shiny I sh…

Just a little post for suggestions on any new knife adventures, and out of sheer curiosity. What is your favorite hammer/knife handle material? My favorite in respect to practicality is red oak- it looks fairly nice, is rather flexible but still pretty strong, and is quite cheap around my area. My favorite from a purely looks-based view is Black/English Walnut, I love the strong grain and alternating lights and darks within the wood.

I have a pattern welded blade that I need to etch soon. I plan to solder a brass guard in place. As I understand it, ferric chloride will affect most metals, so the question is: how can I do one process without damaging the other? Is it even possible with ferric chloride?

Finally finished this puukko sheath out of Buffalo leather with a accoya wood insert (rot resistant). Posted the puukko late last year and it's had plenty of use and really proved itself as a nice field/bushcraft knife. It's my first real attempt at a sheath and although it's not the best, I think it came out OK.

Has anyone ever used any type of wool cloth for micarta? I have an old army blanket and was wondering if this could be used to make a micarta that would be suitable for scales.

Anyone know where a person can send parts to be enameled?

Hey Guys so i don't use wood that much and when i do its stabilized however i just used a block for a hidden tang kitchen knife that i am sure is iron wood but i thought it was stabilized but after grinding into it now i don't think it is so i am trying to figure out what to use to finish it i have heard of wax's polish's oil's varnish's ect.....can anyone point me in the right direction here?

A good hand sanding job starts with a clean grind off the grinder. This one I used a sharp 120 ceramic then a sharp 220 AO. Then I hand sanded at 400 crosswise, then 600 lengthwise with WD40 and Rhynowet. I used a metal bar for these. Final passes were dry at 600, with a piece of leather glued to the sanding bar. Hand sanded W2 knife

hey guys so I got a couple pieces of damasteel to use for bolsters on a couple folding knives. so I saw a video with todd begg on how to etch it and it came out beautiful. (link to video below). so I heat treated the steel ( even tho I am only using it for bolsters I have read heat treating it will effect the etch. so I followed this video exactly starting with muriatic in a double boiler with the water at 160 deg. put it in there checking as I went. in the video he said it took 2-3 mins and you want it to fully etch one alloy and just start on the other. then I neutralized it and dipped it in a 50/50 mix of ferric and vinegar to darken it. so in the video as I said it ca…

So this is a knife I have that was my grandfathers, he gave it to me for skinning deer before he died. The knife seems to have a full through tang and you can see it in between the scales. I was wondering how the tang in between the scales looks like its brass/bronze of made of the same material as the guard. I know it's just colored to look good but I'm wondering how it got it's color. The blade is all silver like steel just the tang you can see looks the same color as the guard.

not directly related to metal but hoping this query is relevant enough not to get me cuffed. I have some really good wood that I've aged and some burals I'm ready to cut open, and some really beautiful spalted maple I'd like to make into proper knife handles. I tried an el'cheapo method of heating minwax wood hardener in a canning jar with my scales then sealing it and letting the vacuum created by cooling impregnate the wood but they still cracked on me. Can anyone recommend a vacuum chamber build or ready-made product suitable for this? I'm hoping to keep it under $200 if possible, for something that will work for a couple of years.

Hi, I'm fairly new to forging and am having issues with my blades rusting alot. It seems like every time I make a knife 1-2 weeks later I will look and see light rust building up on the whole blade... any ideas on how to keep this from happening?

Hello everyone. I need some help with a knife im etching. The blade etches great in some spots, but barely at all in others. Ive made quite a few damascus blades before, but ive never had this happen. For the last few hours ive been experimenting with every variable i can think of; time in acid, grit of sandpaper used to remove oxides, etc. For some reason, it simply refuses to etch properly in this one spot, on both sides of the blade. Any help that can be given will be appreciated. And this knife is supposed to go out to the customer tomorrow, so quick replies would be even more appreciated. Sorry if this topic seems brash and hastily written but im at my wi…

Hello everyone. I wasn't exactly sure where to put this, but it is a finish that I wish to apply to a knife (and several old gun barrels as well) at some point, so here we are. I'm just curious as to what the exact ratios of water, sodium hydroxide, and potassium nitrate are. Like 10 g of KNO3 per gallon of water and 30 g of NaOH per gallon as an example. I understand the process fairly well, and I understand it's basic dangers (get it? Basic?), and I realize you can buy pre mixed solutions to use, but I have these ingredients already (perks of being a backyard chemist) and I'm just curious as to the proper mixtures. I couldn't find much information rega…

I am trying to put a handle on a knife and maybe a chisel that I made, and I am looking for an inexpensive way to do that. In general, would oak from the local Home Depot work for handle scales? Thanks for your time! Scruffy

I have been sealing them with CA glue to fill voids then finishing with wipe on poly. I have also completely finished them using CA glue, but I don't prefer to do it that way. These are made using the instant cast resin without a pressure pot. Any of you wood guys have suggestions for other types of finish to put on them?

Anyone know what these scales are made of?

Hey everyone, Im reaching out to you after a long search online, coming up empty handed and in kind of trouble. I have a sword replica on display in my house for two years now, and it started getting little rust stains. I red online that I should put some salt & lemon on top of it, and leave it out for 2-3 hours and the spots should come right off with a scrub. The spots did go away, but unfortunately new - bigger ones appeared. The thing is, it seems like it caused the blade to change it's color. It's not something that I can feel when touching the blade, and scrubbing it did not seem to have any effect. I also tried to put lemon and salt on …

I know I have a few issues with my grinder I need to sort out, but I'm looking for recommendations for 400 -1000 grit belts, 2x72. i use norton 46, 80 and 120. No problems at all. My 220 and 400 belts are super thin and "bump" when grinding on the platen. These belts are so thin that they twist up all over themselves after you take them back off and hang them up. I think that's a lot of the issue. My 600, 800 and 1000 belts bump a little bit but not as bad as the 220 and 400. The main problem I have with the 600 - 1000 is that they are the grey colored belts and they sometimes leave grey streaks on the metal and especially wood of a handle. Thanks in …

How would you do something like this on a full tang knife? Epoxy the material together before attaching to the knife? Thanks,

Has anyone here achieved a good blued mirror finish? And if so can you explain how you did it? In my mind at least it's the perfect finish for one of my blades, but my only attempt so far was a miserable failure. After getting the mirror finish and wiping the blade down well with acetone then allowing it to dry I applied some cold bluing, but it didn't look good at all. I ended up having to go back to 600 grit and start the finish process again to remove the traces of bluing that remained. If any of you have a method that produces a good blued mirror finish I'm all ears (or eyes I guess).

Sometimes my mind takes flight when it should be sleeping and thus was the case in the wee hours of the morning today. For some reason I got to thinking about damascus (my wife says I always have metal on the brain). Anyway, maybe one of you well-rested, wiser, guys can answer this fore me. Is it possible to get a different degree of etch on the bevel and the flat of a damascus blade by etching with FC or your normal agent, then sanding the bevels and re-etching with something milder like coffee or vinegar? Someone has to have tried it, right? As always thanks in advance!