Kitchen knife engraving

[santos]

Hi everybody

A friend of mine has forged this kitchen knife. This is a gift for a Cordon Bleu , some one who’s cooking for 30 years in my kitchen.
It’s forged in a rod of 100cr6 steel and has a differential tempering, so the steel is quite soft in the back and I’ve a large area (15X60mm) to engrave.
I took an Utamaro’s print for model. I found it in the Boston MFA web site :
The zoom gives a very nice photo ...

The engraving is made with hand push gravers. I’ve used electrical -etching to remove the background. This technique leaves a uniform grey .

If you can read my Japanese lettering you’ll know my wife’s birth name, can’t you?

Thanks for viewing

Best regards

Jean

 

[KCSteve]

Lovely knife and excellent engraving!

 

[Andrew Biggs]

Hi Jean

Beautiful knife and engraving. A very nice implement to have in the kitchen.

Cheers
Andrew

 

[Marrinan]

The photo layout is outstanding as well-Fred

 

[James_Ehlers]

very cool...gonna show that to some of my students.

 

[Dmitry Martinov]

very ellegant knife santos, nothing to take off and nothing to add.

 

[Peter E]

Very nice. Looks like it is a fine kitchen knife too.

Peter

 

[pierre]

simple and beautyfull ( the grey background is superb ) what's a electrical etching ??
do you have a photo ??
thanks

 

[santos]

electro etching

Thank you Steve, Andrew, Marrinan, James , Dmitry and Peter and Pierre for your kind words

Pierre I’ll try to explain you what is electro etching:

I have read this method in a knives forum in Argentina : You need a Direct Current Power Supply

Output: 3 volts Current: 0,1 A ;
I connect the positive wire on the knife with a crocodile clamp . The copper of the negative wire is rounded on the cotton tip.

I use a very simple electrolyte: 1 spoon of kitchen salt in a glass of fresh water

I soak the cotton in the electrolyte and then I apply it on the metal, where I want to remove the background. You would see a lot of little bubbles around the cotton . In a few minutes you can remove 1 or 2/100th of mm.

Before the electro etching I have applied fingernails varnish to mask the engraving, and I ‘ve put adhesive tape in the borders .

If you want more about electro etching , type it in Google and you’ll find a lot of pages explaining it with an English better than mine …

 

[John B.]

Thank you for your very clear explanation, Santos.
John B.

 

[jack]

Very nice Santos. Will that electro etching work on silver or just steel? Jack

 

[pierre]

thanks for the answer
see you next
pierre