Okay folks-

Supposing I wanted to get a nice black finish on stainless steel (no, I don't know what kind of stainless steel I have), what could I do?

I know the traditional gun bluing stuff won't work. I don't know if boiled linseed oil will blacken stainless or not...

I'd rather not resort to painting it, since I don't think it will look as nice and I don't think paint is a very durable finish.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks,
Shawn

That's a tough one. I did a quick internet search and found a couple of reports that if you heat the stainless steel significantly, it will blacken, though I can't attest to the accuracy of this. I just checked Brownells, but didn't see anything listed online for this purpose.

Robar reportedly has a way of accomplishing this, but my guess is that it would be proprietary.

Good luck - let us know if you find a good way of doing this.

Any guess what temperature the stainless will blacken?

As it's a knife, I would be a little concerned about annealing the blade, so maybe I could heat it in the forge to X degrees and then quench (with a 2nd heat and slow cool down to anneal afterwards)?

There are a few stainless steel blueing solutions out there. Can't remember the company name, but they either had one called something like Tru-black or they also made a blueing solution called Tru-black. Wish that I could remember more, but it has been a few years. They are out there though.

Shane

You can get a nice, pretty solid, dark coat on stainless spoons. It isn't matt black or anything, still shiny and a lot darker than it started off. Best thing I found was leaving them in cooking mushy peas in a saucepan. I always have vinegar in there. Ive not tried vinegar on it's own, so I don't know if the peas play a role or not (sulphur in the proteins?). It doesn't happen straight off, takes a few meals to gradually build up. Normal hand washing has no effect on the coating/layer. I've not tried dishwasher (some of those detergents are pretty harsh, to judge from the effect on glass etc..). Probably not practical for your purposes.
Geoff