[TheForge] blackened steel finish

[dan tull]

St. Francis used to say to get round, start w/ sq.  To get sq. start w/ 
round, hammer all of it.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mike Spencer" <mspencer at tallships.ca>
To: <theforge at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Monday, June 28, 2010 1:28 AM
Subject: [TheForge] Re: blackened steel finish


>
> "Lucky7Steel" <lucky7steel at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Karen> Anyone have any suggestions for getting basically the mat
> Karen> finish of hot rolled on cold rolled steel?  I have trouble
> Karen> finding Patina's in Toronto.
>
> All the replies have addressed the 2nd sentence: how to get a black
> patina.  My experience with cold rolled is not that I can't get a
> nice black finish, it's that the relatively shiny surface texture
> doesn't go away.  It's not clear whether Karen is looking for a patina
> or for a way to modify the industrial-product look of the smooth
> finish on cold rolled.
>
> For the latter, you might take a yellow heat so that the piece scales
> a little.  Or you might try sand blasting. Forging all over at a
> yellow heat should do it but you knew that, so that probably isn't
> suitable for your purpose.
>
> There was a point when I could only get 3/8" square in cold rolled and
> I just gave up making fire pokers out of 3/8 sq because the cold
> rolled look, even with the corners chamfered, didn't suit me and the
> price of a poker in my market didn't justify more messing around.
>
> Pokers? Yarn time:
>
> A long-time friend came by one day and wanted fire poker.  So I rooted
> in my pile of rusty junk, found one left over from my crafty markety
> days, cleaned it up and blacked it in the fire.  No charge.  The
> friend has a lot of credit, y'know?  He got a big kick out of the
> art-found-in-a-junk-pile part.
>
> A couple of months later, he showed up with his girlfriend and wanted
> another fire poker, this time as a gift for Bill.  But the previous
> year, I'd done a little job for Bill and told him the fee was a case
> of beer, delivered before the end of August.  The beer never
> materialized.  So this time, I found yet another poker of the same
> vintage in the same junk heap, did protocol with wire brush and hot
> blacking and told my friend it was forty bucks. After a conference
> with the girlfriend, he took it very well, paid up.  I told him the
> story about the case of beer a couple of years later.
>
>
>
> - Mike
>
> -- 
> Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~.
>                                                           /V\
> mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
> http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^
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