Hide your mistakes with acid and stones

This one took a while to finish. The blade was finished even before the summer started, but then other projects got in the way and here we are.

Originally the blade was meant to have a bright, hand rubbed finish, but during the fitting of the guard I inadvertently made some small dings in the blade, and even worse, some rust got into them and caused pitting. It was bad enough that refinishing was out of the question, but not bad enough to throw the blade away (sunk cost fallacy to the rescue).

I decided to try an acid etch and then a stonewash to hide the pitting. The blade etched nicely with just ferric chloride (over-the-counter stuff) and some hand tumbling with hardware store gravel was used for the stone wash. It turned out ok, although I should build a powered tumbler for better consistency. Also after etching my mark there were some rust/oxide particles that embedded themselves into the steel around the mark, and it looks pretty bad. Maybe it would be better to first etch the mark, crisp it up with some light sanding, and then do the etch and stonewash.

Blade is N690 hardened to 60HRC, handle is teak, guard is stainless, also etched and tumbled. The color is obviously different than the blade, but if anyone asks, it is intentional, dammit! Due to the etching making everything matte the only bits of “bling” are the brass spacer (0.5 mm thick) and the cross pin – I’d like to have it etched too, but the risk of ruining the whole piece was too high.