Most of the "cool kid" carbon steel knives come with some sort of coating these days. I know the coating is there to prevent rust, but I'm perfectly capable of keeping my blades oiled and rust free without powder coating. Moreover, the powder coat tends to create a relatively high friction surface and just ends up wearing off eventually anyway. Once it starts to wear, rust can get in underneath of the coating - into places you can't see or oil. Better to go on the offensive before rust starts than try to recover after it's gotten under the coating of your knife.
With all that, I decided to do a little stripping last night. No brass poles involved.
I started with a bone-stock ESEE 5 (on the left in the pic below) coated with their standard powder coat. After some use, the powder coat was starting to wear. I hadn't worn through to bare steel ... yet and I didn't want to.
Once the scales were removed, I was ready to strip.
Based on my initial research, I decided to try gasket remover obtained from my local auto parts store. A couple threads on motorcycle forums suggested that it worked quite well. I bought the 4 oz. Permatex "Power Can".
The Power Can was not so powerful. It softened the powder coat, but not to the point where I could remove it. Then the dispenser broke when I tried to apply a second coat. So, off to the Home Depot for a different chemical stripper. This time, I selected Citristrip (pictured below).
I applied the Citristrip liberally with a small paint brush making sure to get inside of the scale mounting holes and the lanyard hole in the pommel of the knife.
Coated Knife
All this talk of stripping had my wife wanting to go out for dinner so I let the Citristrip do its thing for about two hours while we had a nice meal. When we returned home, I gave my knife a test scrape with the little orange tool shown in the picture below.
Side Note: If you're familiar with CountyComm.com, you may also be familiar with this tool. It's called the Norton Universal Cleaning Stick (U.C.S.). It's made of some sort of chemical-resistant polymer, has sharp, flexible edges and is an invaluable little tool to have on your gun/reloading bench. I buy several at a time because the thin edges tend to get bent and torn.
There were a few areas of powder coat that were a bit more stubborn than others. On those areas, I used the scouring pad side of the scrubbing sponge in the picture above.
After scraping and scrubbing all of the powder coat off of the knife, I decided to try giving it a nice patina with mustard. I'd seen some pictures of carbon steel knives with forced mustard patinas and really liked the look. I also liked the idea of the oxidation preventive of a good patina.
I covered the knife in spicy, brown mustard and wrapped it in plastic wrap as pictured below. After twenty minutes, I removed the knife to find little to no difference. Apparently, my preferred brand of mustard is much better for sandwiches than it is for creating patinas. Supposedly, yellow mustard works better than brown. It must have a more acidic makeup.
Here's the finished product.
Once the stripping and attempt at a patina were finished, I cleaned the knife with a bit of mineral spirits, oiled it up and touched up the edge so I can shave with it again.
All in all, it's a fairly simple project that doesn't take a lot of time if you have the right tools and supplies. I highly recommend the Citristrip as well as the use of the Norton
Universal Cleaning Stick.
