Hey guys ! I am getting better at grinding knives but my finishing skills kinda sucks! I tried to hand sand (with a sanding block) my carbon steel knives (1084 and 1095) but I can't attain a nice and uniform finish ! So I tried to dunk them in ferric chloride to ''coat'' them, but once again the finish came out uneven (even if I sanded the blade up to 800 grit). So I am looking for advices, what tools to buy (not to expensive please haha), or what techniques could be better? Thanks, Max
If you are finishing in ferric one thing to watch is that the blade is very clean. No oils as they will throw off a nice even etch. If you did use it last time grab some acetone and wipe the blade down well then etch. Let us see how they turn out. Even the fails. We can all learn from them together. It would be good to see how each one is coming out on the blade. Someone may have had a similar thing happen
Thanks for the advice ! Next time I will clean the blade b4. For now I decided to etch a pattern on this one and it came out fairly nice in my opinion !
Etching is nice, but you don't want to do it lieu of sanding. Getting that nice finish on your blade can be a real battle. Here's what I find works for me: Before heat treat, start with a course grit (50-80) and work your way up to at least 600. Prepare to spend many hours on it. Take your time, making sure you sand out any file marks and pits with the coarsest grit before moving to the next. Examine the blade carefully after each grit to ensure all you see are the scratches from the sandpaper. Anything else means back at it. And if a mark persists, back up a couple of grits and do it again. When you get up to a fine grit like 400, start sanding in one direction, rather than back and forth. By the time you're finished, there shouldn't be any marks left. Remember, anything you see before HT is at least twice as hard to get out after. After heat treat. Start with a reasonably course grit (120-150) and work up to your finish grit (1000-2000) depending on the finish you want. If you did a good job before the HT, it should go fairly quickly. Again, make sure you don't see any unwanted marks left before moving on to the next grit.
