Thread: Unusual result

I blued this blade using the recipe mentioned here Bluing Recipie The result was not exactly as expected. Dont get me wrong, I like it and I'll be leaving it that way. I was just wondering if any of you guys know why it turned out the way it did? I may sell this one and I'd like be able to explain the pattern.
Thanks
Grant

That is cool, it might not have been the intended result but I like it. Is there a texture to the blade or is that purely an illusion caused by the patchy bluing. Sorry I have no idea of the cause but I feel it is an improvement over the traditional look of bluing and it would be nice to know how to duplicate these results.

I love it! can you mess one of mine up like that?

Originally Posted by thehekler

Is there a texture to the blade or is that purely an illusion caused by the patchy bluing.

Its smooth, no noticable bumps where the markings are.

almost looks like "popping the grain" in guitar finishing.. like the bluings taking to some parts of the metal grain but not others

hmmmm. Very unusual.

Blueing is a chemical reaction driven by oxidization, or rather release of free Gibbs energy through a redox reaction.
Oxidization of inhomogenous mixtures of steel usually lead to the part of the steel wich is easier oxidized appearing dark, and the part of the steel with a higher oxidization potential appearing light. That´s how etching a folded Blade is done.

Because there is no pattern evident, I don´t think the steel for the blade got folded,
or it got folded wildly and numerous times. It looks more like the steel itself has become inhomogenous (or was to begin with).
It could be there are some depleted zones. Depletion occours over time, when alloying elements dissolve through the material and agglomerate to certain areas.
This makes the steel inhomogenous and changes the reduction potential of these parts.

I wonder if it affects the performance of the steel. Have you sharpened it yet, and found something unusual?

What kind of steel is it? Looks like the hard grain crystalline structure of the steel didn't take to the blueing process & the softer grain took to it & actually etched a bit. Would be cool to look at it under magnification. No matter, turned out rather nicely!

The pattern is super cool, I like the way it looks.

Charlie

Do you oil your blades? Whenever I blue ferrules on my bamboo rods, any fingerprint or oil mark turns out looking like yor razor. only thing that ever gets consistent results, for me, is washing with dawn dish soap, drying, wash again, drying and then bluing.

Originally Posted by Lesslemming

Blueing is a chemical reaction driven by oxidization, or rather release of free Gibbs energy through a redox reaction.
Oxidization of inhomogenous mixtures of steel usually lead to the part of the steel wich is easier oxidized appearing dark...

Sorry, this reminded me of a song that my gen chem prof taught us to remember the Gibbs free energy equation.

Originally Posted by DPeet

Do you oil your blades? Whenever I blue ferrules on my bamboo rods, any fingerprint or oil mark turns out looking like yor razor. only thing that ever gets consistent results, for me, is washing with dawn dish soap, drying, wash again, drying and then bluing.

I agree.

I think you want to know what happened just so you can repeat it. I wouldn't blame you, it looks cool.