Dyeing the steel

[Broke another one]

Hello,

I have a knife I am working on and while looking at some swords on the internet I stumbled across one that had red steel. I was wondering if anyone had ever dyed the blade of this knifes and how difficult it was. Any information would be helpful because I would like to try it out.

[Cody D Works]

looked it up on the internet. Most high carbon steel will not take dye. Believe somewhere said it might could be annodized though

[Scott Roush]

You can do a controlled rust or you can electroplate with copper... among other things.  Never heard of dyeing....

[Ragnarok Forge]

No way to dye high carbon steel that I have ever heard of or found.  You can electroplate it.  Another trick would be to use cerakote or some other material like that to obtain the color you want.

[Scott Roush]

Here is a kiridashi that I 'electroplated' by dissolving copper wire into ferric chloride and doing multiple soaks of dashi followed by fixing with windex.

 

[Broke another one]

First time I have seen a kiridashi on this site.

Thanks everyone for giving me my answer I needed.

Cody I looked up the word "anodized" and it turns out that the process doesn't work well on steel only aluminum and titanium (unless I read it wrong). But still very interesting to learn that.

Scott, you said something that caught my eye ..."among other things..." What all can you electroplate?

Thank you for your time and guidance.

[Scott Roush]

I'm not sure what I meant by that. I think I meant that there are other chemical solutions that you can use to achieve various patinas.  I'm not even sure if electroplating is the right term for what I'm doing....

If I can find the link, I recently found an awesome method for doing a beautiful controlled rust on steel.  It is a japanese method for patinating tsubas and habakis for swords.

[Broke another one]

Don't know if I like the sound of "rust" on my war blade, but please if you can find the link post it. I'm always up for new things.