[Anton de Vries]

Salt & vinegar turns my Albion SL blade black. There's rust too, but a large % of the blade is black.
(So thís is how Elric's sword was made!)
It is easily removed with steel wool leaving just a 'normal' light grey patina.
The guard and pommel do not turn black, those just rust normally.

As far as I know rust is supposed to be brown-ish. What is that black stuff? Any ideas?

[Jonathan Blair]

The black stuff might be a form of iron (III) oxide or rust. Rust can be orange-red or brownish-black. If I remember correctly from my Navy Power School days, black rust is protective, whereas reddish orange actively destroys the steel. Either that or the salt and vinegar are interacting with some contaminent (oil?) on the blade. Perhaps some one more versed in metalurgy could clear things up.

[Anton de Vries]

A trace element seems to be the culprit, probably sulphur or manganese.

Anyway for those interested in the effects of vinegar and salt on an Albion blade, here's a closeup of the final result. (Next to an untreated NG blade)
Wrapped it in toilet paper, then soaked it in vinegar&salt and let it sit overnight. Cleaned it with very fine steel wool and repeated the process.
There's no pitting visible with the naked eye.
The blade had hundreds of scratches before the treatment. Most of those are gone or invisible now.
I like the (easily reversible btw) result. The sword looks old now, without losing functionality/integrity.
I may do another experiment in the future but for now it's okay.

[Jonathan Blair]

Good to hear you got the result you wanted and found out the cause of the problem.

[Alexander Ren]

That looks very nice. Could you post a picture of the whole sword please.
Thanks... Alex

[Jean Thibodeau]

Anton;

Got similar results using lemon juice rather than salt and vinegar: Seems to give a black or dark grey finish or light grey if cleaned up a bit. The texture of the toilet paper does partially transfer and doing the process a few times will randomize the pattern.

If repolished there is some nice texturing that hides scratch marks or rough grinder lines. ( Hides modern tool marks real nice. )

Could be wrong but the lemon juice creates a rapid patination but no red rust that I noticed.

[Anton de Vries]

[Hank Reinhardt]

Best job of antiqueing a blade is done by Simon at Raven Armouries. He will not tell anyone, but I have seen it fool some experts int he field. Simon is also quite careful about markiong his blades so that they can't be passed off as originals. If you take some plain gun blue, clean the blade, blue it, then take 4 ought steel wool and finish it done, you can get a beautiful grey finish that makes the sword look "aged" but not antique. I use blueing a lot, as it does a good job of hiding the scratches. Lemon juice is an acid, and will etch the blazde slightly. As Jean said, if you do it several times with the paper, you will get a random pattern.

[Jean Thibodeau]

And as Hank mentioned using cold blue can also be used after the " acid " or salt treatment to darken the whole blade.
If some light polishing is done with steel wool the blue will highlight the etching in the low areas.

The steel wool can be used to just lighten the finish a bit or remove it almost completely.

One can repeat the whole process a few times if one goes too far with the polishing or just re-blue and repolish a little less vigourously.

The effect can be a slight aging to a " faux " Damascus look depending on the amount of etching and polishing.

In any case Anton did a very nice job making the sword look well used over many years but still not abused and well taken care off: A sword that would have seen many campaigns but still in good enough shape to still be in use.

[Aaron Schnatterly]

It's quite interesting what a variety of substances can do to steel...

Quite by (aggravating) mistake, while transferring mead or cyser from primary to secondary fermentation, some sprayed out and onto metal in the area. I thought I had cleaned it all up, but had missed some, which I found the next day - about 12 hours later. The result was a very dark grey spot where each droplet had landed - and it was a pain to buff out. There was no pitting or degredation that was apparent, just staining. If I had dipped a blade in this, or had I used a fine mist spray bottle over several separate applications, I believe I would have come up with a beautiful aged appearance that was quite durable, to boot.

I don't know if it was apple cider, honey, alcohol, yeast, complex sugars, cherry juice, or what combination thereof may have been the "culprit", or if I'll be able to do this again upon intention, but I may have to try.

[Philip S]

[Jean Thibodeau]

[Jean Thibodeau]

Old thread, same idea.

Been using lemon juice and patterned toilet paper with good results but I just tried yellow mustard just dabbed on the surface of my New Generation 2 Crusader dagger and it work great and FAST: Dabbed a thin coat on, left it for a couple of hours and I already had some etching and red rust on the blade.

A little gun blue to darken the blade and a quick oil and sanding sponge work to remove most of it left a subtle darkening with light etching. This also hides any modern tool marks or sanding marks quite well.

Could do it over for a few cycles and deepen the etching effect depending on how distressed I want the finish to look.

Will do the same to my Generation 2 Dordogne sword but very lightly as I just want it to have a used campaign used patina and not a genuine " antique " look.

As Sean has said in this Topic thread or in another thread dealing with this: This makes what would look like a " shiny " wallhanger into what looks like a real sword. Some of the better inexpensive swords look 300% better with a little home project work and a bonus is that current Windlass or Generation 2, to name a couple, are well put together using good tangs and good heat treat and can be considered as real swords.

With more expensive Albion or A & A the finish is already finished like as period but as new swords: Antiquing these seems less desirable for possible re-sale value and frankly they are perfect the way they are. ( feels more like abuse than upgrading. ).

[Chad Arnow]

Jean,
If you ever get a digital camera, I'd love to see pics of how antiquing changes these recent purchases.

Do you have a scanner? You could always lay the dagger in it and the sword's hilt. I've done that before with fairly decent results.

Another cheap alternative would be to buy a cheap disposable camera and get the pictures developed onto CD rather than in print. Over the long haul, that wouldn't be very cost-effective, though.

[Jean Thibodeau]

[Michael Mercier]

As I have posted on here before, I aged my Del Tin 2131 but to a more extreme level. I rewrapped the leather grip with hemp cord and sealed it as well as aging the blade and fittings. This is my result of my "secret" forumula (I'm sure most of you have seen this already)

Mike

[Jean Thibodeau]

[William Goodwin]

I achieved this effect by using just regular household Wal-Mart brand yellow mustard......

I've also used the gun blueing stuff on a MRL type Schiavona.......


Bill