Take the stainless out of stainless steel?

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AeroncaTAL

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Hey all you knife makers and metal workers. Is there anyway to take the stainless out of stainless steel? I got a couple of cheap stainless steel kitchen knives from the Goodwill ($.99 each) to make into "patch" knives. I want to rust and pit the blades, but of course the stainless resists the Birchwood Casey blueing. Is there anything that would react with the stainless steel and rust the stuff? Other than the acid/blood from the critters in Alien? :winking:
Scott
 
Triple 13 fertilizer might do it. I know it'll eat the crap out of regular steel.
 
You might try acids and humidity. Stainless can rust, but it usually needs some help. Browning solution might work if you wet it well and keep it steamy. I know my stainless Spyderco pocket knife will sure rust during summer humidity and sweat if I don't keep it oiled. You might try a wet salt pack also. I think the key is going to be keeping it humid with whatever you decide to try on it. Good luck and let us know how it turns out!
 
Might acid etch, stainless means just that, "stain less," but it is not bullet proof to certain chemicals.
 
Right now I have them in a jar of bleach. Looks like they are starting to rust a little. I'll see how everything is in the morning. I like the fertilizer idea, :hmm:
Maybe if the Chlorox doesn't work, I'll clean them off and dig some fertilizer out of the shed, give that a try. Don't have to worry much about humidity, I'm in Oregon, remember. It rains here... :rotf:
Thanks all, I'll keep ya posted on how things turn out.
Scott
 
It may be tought to do. The addition of chrome and nickle used to make that grade of steel is not a coating or layer. You may want toa also try using something like 220 grit paper to sand the blad and then using the bluiing or browning solution, then clean the solution off with steel wool. Good luck and let us know how it turns out.
 
I've had some success with trying to rust, stain, age stainless steel knife blades. I played around with different techniques; imersing the knifeblades in bleach, imersing the blades salt water, trying cold blue, cold brown, heating it with a torch, etc. The best results I got was applying super blue on the blade, then heating it with a torch. This browned the stainless steel immediately. I then rubbed it back with steel wool to get the effect I wanted. Here is a pic of the two blades I was playing around with:

blades.jpg


I've made a patch knife from one of the blades. Here's a link to that thread:

Patch Knife

Scott
 
Industrial strenth Iodine (not the kind you put on cuts) and rock salt. Souse the knife in the iodine, dip it in salt, the wrap in plastic wrap. Every so often open it up and drip some more iodine on it. Might want to use gloves when handling the iodine! Let it sit for a while...it will rust like crazy!
 
When I was reading up on stainless steel, what its composition was and so forth, I remember seeing that chlorinated salts would penetrate the thin oxidized layer which provides the protection to the steel. I was surprised that bleach and salt water treatments did not seem to have much of an effect on the metal. Maybe I didn't leave them in long enough...
Something to try at another time.
Scott
 
Looks like you've made good progress, Scott. I couldn't have told that either of those blades are stainless.
 
Sharing experiences, ideas, methods, etc. is what this forum is all about. There is a great wealth of knowledge here and if I can pass along what little bit I have, that is just a small payment for what I have learned.
Scott
 
An old hardware store in town carries cheap, good quality carbon steel, butcher, steak, and paring knives. The most expensive knife is about 5 bucks, so why go through all of the trouble to camouflage stainless steel?

Stainless hunting knives are not of the same style as 18th and 19 century knives, so they stand out like a sore thumb, even with attempts at cammo.

If you want to rework old knives, fleamarkets and yard sales are the place to go. I've bought carbon steel kitchen knives at yard sales and flea markets for less than a buck apiece, and in some cases for as lttle as a quarter.
J.D.
 
J.D. said:
An old hardware store in town carries cheap, good quality carbon steel, butcher, steak, and paring knives. The most expensive knife is about 5 bucks, so why go through all of the trouble to camouflage stainless steel?

Because I wanted to. :haha:

Stainless hunting knives are not of the same style as 18th and 19 century knives, so they stand out like a sore thumb, even with attempts at cammo.

I wasn't attempting to make something absolutely Period or Hstorically Correct. As far as I am concerned, it is all make beleive anyway (no offense to you reenactors, please don't condem me! :haha:). You take a gun like I have which is PC, and it is made of modern steel, manufactured with modern techniques with a stock which was inletted probably by using CAD/CAM. Who are we trying to kid?

If you want to rework old knives, fleamarkets and yard sales are the place to go. I've bought carbon steel kitchen knives at yard sales and flea markets for less than a buck apiece, and in some cases for as lttle as a quarter.

It just so happened I was at the Goodwill looking for old carbon steel knives when I saw these, and liked the look of them. Didn't really sink in that they were stainless and that they wouldn't artifically age well until after I got home. This whole experiment was about what it would take to artificially age stainless steel. It wasn't about PC and HC. I read the threads in this forum for tricks and techniques that I can use to manufacture the items I will use in this new found sport of muzzleloading. I passed along what I found by this exercise because I thought it might benefit someone else in their work. You missed the point of this entire thread.

Respectively,
Scott
 
Nice how you jump down the throat of someone who's trying to help you.

It's kind of similar to asking which blade is best for whittling toothpicks out of tree trunks and griping at the guy who points out that a box of a hundred can be bought for a few cents.

I can see how someone could miss the point of this thread, though. I'm having a hard time pinning it down myself. You don't care if your knife is of the right metal or form to match the time period of your rifle, so why do you want to rust the blades? Wouldn't they actually perform better if they weren't rusted?

I'm not attacking you, I'm just wondering why you're attacking someone else for trying to help you when it seems you're having trouble figuring out what it is you're trying to do.
 
41Aeronca said:
You take a gun like I have which is PC, and it is made of modern steel, manufactured with modern techniques with a stock which was inletted probably by using CAD/CAM. Who are we trying to kid?

If your gun is commerciallly manufactured using CAD/CAM to contour and inlet the stock, I got news for you. It ain't PC. I have yet to see, with one or two notable acceptions, any commercially manufactured ML gun that is anywhere near close to being correct.

The stock on my gun was not contoured and inlet on CAD/CAM, BTW.

41Aeronca said:
I wasn't attempting to make something absolutely Period or Hstorically Correct. As far as I am concerned, it is all make beleive anyway (no offense to you reenactors, please don't condem me!
You missed the point of this entire thread.

And no, I didn't miss the point of the thread. As I understood the point of the thread it's about making something usefull out of inexpensive, readily available items.

The point of my post was to inform you that there is a less expensive and less labor intesive way to achieve a higher quality and more believable end result.

Is it possible that you have missed the entire point of the sport? :hmm:
J.D.
 
Aeronca,

Depends on how much iron is in the stainless steel.

I used to work in a large chemical plant. Almost all stainless steel machinery.

Acetic acid fumes will really rip up certain grades of stainless steel. Looked at samples of stainless exposed to acetic acid fumes. The fumes would eat the tiny granules of iron out of the stainless. The stainless would get all rusty and discolored on the surface.

The acetic acid fumes were far more destructive than if the stainless was immersed in the liquid.

You might try hanging a stainless knife blade in a jug with a few ounces of cider vinegar in the bottom of the jug.
Going back to the Romans and Greeks. They would hang lead plates or copper plates in crocks with wine vinegar to produce lead acetate and copper acetate.
I did that here at home with steel, copper and lead just to see how it worked.

Cider vinegar is about 4% acetic acid while wine vinegar runs around 8% acetic acid.
 
Stainless steel is a steel that contains 10% or more of Chromium. There isnt any way to take the chromium out of stainless steel, that is feasible. Stainless steels are generally designated with numbers beginning with 3 or 4, such as 340SS or 410SS, 420, 430 or the good old common standby for knives, 440SS. The stainless alloys vary in the amount of carbon and the amount of chromium and other alloys, but to be designated stainless, there is more than ten percent chromium in the alloy.
 
Dry calcium chloride will, if given enough time, utterly DESTROY stainless. I retired from a chemical plant that made the stuff. The only things that really held up to it are exotics like monel or inconel. It's available as an ice melter under the names of Peladow or Prestone Driveway Heat. And it will really do a number on stainless steel.
 


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