I got a question on a damascus blade

[christian]

Hello,
Im a new bladesmith at the age of 16 and and am wondering how you get a damascus blade to have the etch lines light while the rest of the blade is dark, appossed to the etch lines being dark and the rest of the knife light.

do you dip the knife in somthing before you etch it or is it jst the type of steel you use?

thanks,
Christian

[ciladog]

Christian

You need to take your time learning this craft. At least 65% of the people (maybe more) that give you advice have never forged a blade, never etched a blade, they work from a computer and what they have read not what they have done.

There are scores of threads on IFI about etching knife blades and all you have to do is search them and read.

[Glenn]

The Damascus pattern is formed by two or more dis-similar metals being layered and welded together. One is darker, the other lighter..

[ThomasPowers]

First thing is that usually the etched deeper areas are darker to make them lighter you may need to do a bit of trickery. Say etch, clean and polish and then coat the whole thing with a resist and then hone off the tops and patinate with something like blueing compound getting a dark highs and light lows.

Lots of fun things you can do to colour pattern welded materials, make some up and start experimenting! (Please remember that a lot of chemicals are toxic so play SAFELY!)

[Dodge]

What turns dark and what stays light does have a bit to do with the types of steel used in the combination. Simply put, some metals etch darker than others. You really can't specify which one gets darker than the other without resorting to such alchemy as Thomas described B)