How to make a pattern on a knife blade. Artistic metal etching - knife blade

For some, the mention of the engraving on the knife evokes associations with premium personalized edged weapons, for others - pleasant memories of the counters of hunting stores, where “Bear”, “Vepr”, “Boar” and other knives with animals skillfully depicted on the blades lie in wide rows.

Hand engraving at the beginning of the XXI century is on the verge of extinction. If you want to get a knife with an engraving, it is self made, it is best to look for a master at a thematic fair. True, the money will have to be paid fabulous - more than for an ordinary custom knife. Hand engraving significantly increases its value.

Moreover, it cannot be said that engraving made according to the latest technology is inferior in beauty to manual engraving - the latter, perhaps, is no more than chic now. Consider the old new school knife engravings.

The main goals of engraving today, as well as tens and hundreds of years ago, are the identification of weapons (for example, putting the emblem of the manufacturer or the name of the master on the blade) and personification (gift inscriptions, symbols, patterns, drawings, sacral signs, etc.).

Basic archaic engraving techniques

Cutting engraving

The first of the three types of engraving that we will talk about today. Its historical name is bulino, after the name of the main cutter, which was used in the Italian school of engravers. Of course, now more tools are used to implement it, but the principle itself has remained unchanged: the master conveys the texture of the depicted object and the play of chiaroscuro, cutting the metal surface with pressure of various strengths and at different angles. Moreover, working with a thin needle is even more preferable here than with an ordinary cutter: it allows you to more accurately depict small details that are common for hunting subjects - for example, the texture of animal skins.

Once upon a time, the cutting technique was used mainly to decorate guns (as it happened historically), and then masters of the knife art mastered it, and it’s so good that it is now associated, first of all, with melee weapons, and not with firearms. It is applied mainly to the metal parts of the sheaths and hilts: bolsters, crosshairs, rivets, etc. Although occasionally this type of engraving is also used on the blades themselves.

There are three types of this technique: dotted, linear and mixed - from the names it is clear what this or that type looks like. Each master decides for himself in which technique to work, but for the most part they have to be combined.

Plane engraving

If you have come across real hunting knives more than once (especially of the old model, and even made in a single copy), then you have probably noticed how often a floral ornament is used in their engraving. This is no coincidence: once every depicted plant had a deep sacred meaning. The lotus symbolizes immortality, the laurel - glory, the oak - power, the palm - peace and victory, the vine (pictured below) - the sacrament of communion. It was these ornaments that were most often made using the technique of planar engraving: there was no particular need to create the texture of the same wool or feathers in them.

What is its difference from the previous type? If in the first case furrows are cut on the surface (with long lines or dotted lines), then here we create two or more planes, while using different chisels to achieve the correct shadow effect. For example, an inscription or ornament will seem to protrude from the surrounding surface or, on the contrary, will be deepened into it.

In the production of edged weapons, such a technique on blades is less common, as a rule - for decorating the device and scabbard.

Plate engraving (chasing)

Chasing is half modeling of a rough shape, half bringing the workpiece to perfection with the help of hammer cutters (bolkhshtichels, flyakhshtichels, spitzshtichels). True, now it is almost impossible to meet it, it is almost completely replaced by casting. Exceptions include, perhaps, the author's weapons of the peoples of Transcaucasia.

In the photo below, you can see how the roughly molded head of a tiger turns into a very detailed image on the pommel. hunting knife.

The head of a tiger on the pommel of a knife: in the first two photos - a freshly cast form, in the last - processed with incisors

For incisive engraving (all three of its types), craftsmen use a diamond-shaped cutter, also known as a burr, as well as a burr with a cross section similar to a triangle with rounded edges, a steel needle, dyes and auxiliary tools- pencils, whitewash, magnifiers and microscopes, whetstone, steel ruler. For other species - the same, but with a wider range of engravers.

As for the materials themselves, on which the engraving is done, a wide variety of steels and alloys are suitable (although here you need to take into account the degree of hardening of the coating on which the work is being done), titanium, aluminum, as well as non-ferrous and precious metals.

Technique

1. Before drawing a pattern on the surface, the master first grinds and polishes the surface, then covers it with white.
2. The drawing is applied with a mechanical pencil with a lead no thicker than 0.3 mm in cross section*.
3. With steel needles, the master outlines the contours of the future drawing. Now the white can be removed.
4. At this stage, in fact, the engraving work itself begins: with refined movements, the master punctures with dots or cuts out the desired ornament with lines. For planar engraving, the background is also processed - with special notches that visually add volume. For chasing, the background, as they say, is lowered and processed with a pearl cutter.
5. To emphasize the contrast, varnishes or oxidizing agents are used to darken the carved grooves, and with the help of polishing agents, areas not touched by the engraving are highlighted.
6. Burrs that occur during work are removed with the finest grit grinders you can find.

In fact, of course, there are several other ways to transfer the drawing to the surface (using plastic film or tracing paper), but drawing with a pencil is the most common option, especially for incisive techniques.

Interesting and useful about old school engraving

• Engraving, whatever one may say, violates the integrity of the product; if it had corrosion protection, it should be restored. Most engraved products are hardened - this makes the steel more resistant to corrosion; if during engraving gold and silver alleys were made, then after hardening they will look even more beautiful.
• After engraving and hardening, the product is often covered with printing ink - it enhances the contrast of chiaroscuro.
• Most of the really worthwhile hand-engraved knives (that is, elite edged weapons) are created by members of the Guild of Gunsmiths, and the products themselves are classified by the Ministry of Culture as objects of cultural value. On November 1, 2002, the State Duma adopted an amendment to the law "On Weapons": along with civilian, service and military weapons, a fourth category appeared - weapons of artistic value.
• Engraving is also divided not into three, but into two types: dashed (which in this article is divided into incisive and planar) and armored (lamellar or chasing).

The modern market for edged weapons engraving services

From the previous chapter, it probably became clear that real engraving, which was still more or less done in the 90s and which was already quite expensive then, has now practically disappeared - due to the fact that for much less money you can get at least not individual, but more technical and affordable solutions.

Everything modern methods allow you to apply perfectly even inscriptions, emblems, logos on the metal in a short time, trademarks of any complexity, and some are also quite complex drawings like color portraits and landscapes.

Laser engraving and laser sublimation

Such engraving is done everywhere and literally in 15–20 minutes: usually, even in small towns, there are a couple of points where you can leave a knife and get it back in half an hour with the necessary inscription, emblem, drawing, and so on.

The prevalence of the method is facilitated by the relative cheapness of the equipment and the small amount of space required for its placement. General principle the action is as follows: a laser (light) beam evaporates a part of the metal so that this trace becomes visually noticeable; the most powerful lasers cut through the metal completely - this is already ultra-precise and ultra-thin laser cutting. True, this equipment itself can be both simple and limited in the scope of use, and more multifunctional.

CO 2 laser engravers are just the budget category. Most likely, this is the equipment that is in the mall closest to you, where, among other things, they print on mugs and T-shirts. These engravers do not have a particularly strong beam, and they work mostly on wood, plastic, leather, etc. - that is, in our case, on hilts and scabbards. True, according to a special coating, if such is applied to the metal parts of the knife, for example, on enamelled brass, they also quite successfully engrave. These engravers received the CO 2 marking due to the fact that the long infrared radiation with which they work is produced by carbon dioxide molecules.

A completely different type of radiation is used by engravers of the categories “yttrium aluminum garnet” (YAG), vanadate lasers (vanadate laser) and fiber lasers (fiber laser). Their working wavelength is designed to work with metals, and the highest strength and hardness. The most powerful (and at the same time transportable and allows you to make drawings) high resolution) is the last type, fiber laser.

See how different laser engraving is from any archaic technique: here the dedicatory inscription and the kolovrat seem to be written out with light paint, and not cut out.

These lasers are good in their niche, but they do not know how to make color images, because they work exclusively with metal evaporation. To apply color to a steel surface, a laser sublimation method is needed - a printed transfer is placed on the metal or material of the handle, which is evaporated by a laser. As a result, the transfer pattern remains permanently on the surface. Actually, this is the same technology with which images are made on mouse pads, mugs, T-shirts.

Mechanical engraving

Modern mechanical engraving on metal is reminiscent of the old techniques that we talked about, however, it is done, again, not by hand, but by machine. The program guides the cutter along the pattern that is given to it. The diamond tip works on the hardest materials; for polishing or working on stainless steel, special nozzles for cutters are used. They not only make it possible to form embossed surfaces, but also make slotted artistic miniatures on the blade.

At the junction of modern and archaic engravings, there is also manual mechanical engraving - it also uses a rotating cutter (the tool itself is called a pantograph), but it is directed not by a computer, but by a human hand. This is also not a very common type of work, although it is also cheaper and faster than the same traditional incisive technique.

What is good about this engraving is that it can work on any type of metal (any hardness and purity), unlike a laser, which is often limited in its scope. At the same time, the price remains almost the same, however, a master working on a mechanical engraving machine has to study much more - both the specifics of working with various materials, and pressure, etc.

Engraving by sandblasting

Externally finished goods with sandblasted engraving, they are most similar to knives made using the old planar engraving technique - like the previous type, it is voluminous (unlike that made by a laser), and even more voluminous, since the metal is cut deeper here.

A stencil is placed on the metal, cut (depending on the complexity and capabilities of the customer and the engraver) manually, on a plotter or with a laser; then the abrasive blasting machine accurately and directedly sprays abrasive powder onto the surface - different fractions and pressures. By changing the indicators of the last two characteristics, we can change the depth of the picture and its resolution.

This engraving is also done on other hard materials from which the knife is made - for example, on a plastic or bone handle.

Artistic electrochemical etching

Another way to remove metal particles and form patterns on its surface is electrochemical etching using an electrolyte liquid and using an electrode. To understand how this is done, you need to go back a couple of decades - to the times when acids were used on their own, and not as an electrolyte.

The old school of etching already knew how to fake the pattern of Damascus steel - so if you come across a cheap knife with a pattern similar to Damascus stains, do not rush to buy it, it may be a fake. Such patterns were made using the so-called masking technique, when the part of the blade that was not subject to etching was varnished, and the rest was exposed to acids; for of stainless steel lapis was used.

After that, the era of ultraviolet irradiation of the blade began, on which a pattern was drawn with a special conservation varnish; after that, the pattern appeared in caustic soda. Then the masters learned to use not varnish, but a film specially made for this, which, of course, made the work cleaner: such films can be ordered in specialized stores, and they are still being worked with now.

All that the master needs besides this film is an electrolyte (orthophosphoric, hydrochloric and sulfuric acids) and sources of direct and alternating current. This method is suitable when the pattern on the steel is repeated (for example, we are talking about marking metal). Under the influence of current, the electrodes pull out particles of metal from its surface; such a pattern is made with any depth.

Electrochemical etching is also called galvanic, since the current source is a galvanic battery. It is noteworthy that modern way safer for health, since pickling due to galvanization is fast and harmful acid vapors simply do not have time to be released.

Melee weapons have always attracted the attention of men. Especially knives made of Damascus steel. Tula blacksmiths not only revived the ancient secret of making a Damascus blade, but also improved and diversified the pattern on steel. The blade began to play with unusual wavy lines, various bizarre shapes. A blacksmith, like a woodcarver, thinks in advance what kind of drawing he wants to make, so that his product would be unique and bring beauty to connoisseurs of edged weapons.

I, a woodcarver from Tula, was lucky not only to decorate the handle of a knife, but also to acquaint you with my work. On the pages of this site I will show a master class on finishing the handle of a hunting knife made of Damascus steel. The handle of the knife is made of Caucasian walnut wood, which is distinguished by its strength and specific texture, which gives a beautiful color after processing. The size of the pen has a small tolerance for the realization of my plan. But more on that later. To begin with, I came up with a sketch, which I carefully drew on paper. I moved it to the top of the knife handle.

I would like to clarify my point. On the upper part there will be not only a thread, 3 directions will be connected here:

1) Thread

2) All silver

3) Inlay with voluminous boxwood inserts.

All this I concluded in one drawing, but in a different technical execution. This is quite difficult in execution, and therefore the invented bunch of a new connection is rarely used by me.
Well, perhaps, let's start piercing the threads of the back of the handle. With a semicircular chisel of a small radius, we pierce the carved layout along the back stop. The layout has the same pattern elements along the entire diameter of the handle.

Since I made the markup in advance, the fragments of the drawing turned out to be the same, which made it easier to puncture the contour.

In the lower part, a fragment of a leafy ornament is drawn, it seems to embody the beginning, the basis from which a carving and a notch emerge on the upper part of the handle. In my case, the pattern is symmetrical, so I make two identical punctures, changing only the radii of the chisels.

First of all, everything. The groove is punctured with radius chisels to a depth of 1 mm. Since the pattern is symmetrical, the puncture of one part of the pattern repeats the radius of the other part.

As the curl twists, the radius of the chisel decreases.

I will not rush with everything, but I will move on to the inlay of elements from boxwood. This will complement the drawing and visually arrange all the inserts in their places. I first sawed the leaves out of 3mm thick boxwood plates with a jigsaw. I chose this size so that in the flat-relief carving the inlaid boxwood leaves would later look voluminous with the carving.

I turn to the inlay of elements from boxwood.

The place for the leaf is chosen and I carefully try on the element in place. If the inlaid part does not enter immediately, then I cut the edge that interferes. I do not make efforts so as not to break the insert, but gradually adjust it in place. With a cranberry made from a thin needle file, I clean the bottom of the landing cavity so that the part sinks as deep as possible into the handle array and is flush with the surface.

Again we return to all things silver. But as I said earlier, the surface of the vase will be uneven and limited by space. This creates certain difficulties. The difficulty lies in the small size of the surface itself. The constant mobility of the product in work makes it necessary to focus on safety. As the Russian proverb says: "The eyes are afraid, but the hands are doing." Here's how to protect your hands! After all, with these hands, holding a flat chisel, I smoothly lower the surface of the notch. And in some places, along with boxwood inserts, because. inlaid leaves are an integral part of the alley and one connecting element.

Increase

The pattern of a silver thread, which has a thickness of 0.2 mm, is already clearly visible. and a width of 0.76 mm. Now my idea is becoming clearer to you, where the lines of the notch are smoothly connected, we correct the groove with a straight chisel. I flatten the tip of the silver ribbon and insert it into the groove close to the silver thread.

Increase

I press the thread into the groove, gently twisting it into a spiral curl. Having twisted the spiral, I cut off the silver at the end of the curl.

Increase

To give a finished look to the curl, you need to put a point. Silver dot. To do this, I make a small puncture with an awl at the end of the curl.

Increase

We hammer the protruding piece of wire, but not completely. I do this so that when stripping, the silver point has smooth edges, and is not deformed by wire cutters.

Increase

Choosing the background, I expose the contour of the notch and carving.

Increase

Only the contour of the vase and thread was drawn.

The surface must be perfectly flat, without mechanical traces of processing. To do it neatly in a limited space, you have to try. Having cleaned the surface of the handle with a needle file and emery (except for carving fragments), I moisten it with water.

Increase

The water raises the pile when it dries. This is clearly visible on the surface. After drying, I protect the surface with sandpaper. Again, I urinate and clean up, but with fine emery. I do this so that in the future, when impregnated with drying oil, the pile no longer rises, and the final polishing takes less time. After the third impregnation, I do not use emery. The entire surface becomes smooth and matte.

Sampling is carried out from the middle to the edges. This is in order not to crush the edges of the recess border with a chisel. Having adjusted the insert, I put it on the glue, but so that it rises above the surface. Having visually compared the second insert on the other side and making sure of their symmetry, I outline the outline. I also inlay the second insert.

I give the elements the shape of the surface of the handle. Both elements rise above the surface by approximately 2mm. I left this height for the next cut, so that they are voluminous. In this part of the master class, you can see how the handle is transformed. From above and below, floral ornaments float on it, intertwined with a silver inlay and inlaid with volumetric boxwood inserts. The back of the handle is encircled by a layout of identical plant elements. It remains to give shape to all this splendor. This is what I will do in the third part of my master class.

Part 3

This preparation is essential. It is a definite and important link for the next stage of cutting the plant element. Going further, I use a chisel whose radius matches the small sizes of the various elements of the layout.

I cut each leaf of the layout with a chisel. Starting from the tips of the sheet and smoothly moving to the central part. The beginning of the leaf is cut with the entire radius of the chisel. Moving to the middle of the sheet, I smoothly turn the chisel. With this movement, I adjust the width of the cut and cut through the bottlenecks with the tip of the radius chisel. Prepared technology is present for each element, no matter where it is located. At the bottom of the handle, lowering the element, I also cut the central part of the sheet with a corner.

Many people think: “Why such training? She takes time. Immediately passed the radius, and that's it! But no, when the fragment is not prepared, the radius of the chisel cuts off the excess on a flat surface, sometimes chipping off the fragment without having time to give it a shape. According to the prepared fragment, the chisel moves along the geometry of the sheet and cuts only what is needed. At this moment I control the cut itself.

And on the other hand. So the thread elements will be the same in cutting and in shape. Inlaid boxwood leaflets are prepared and cut in the same way as carving, although they are inlaid details of the notch. They have the same volume as the thread.

Having finished with a flat-relief carving, I begin to impose a chamfer on the notch, which, in the process of interlacing with the carving, has fuzzy edges.

I immerse the product in drying oil for a day, if the volume allows or lubricate it abundantly. After the drying oil is absorbed and dries a little, I protect the surface with fine emery to remove the film.

I repeat this process until the drying oil is no longer absorbed. At the last cleaning, already worked out with fine sandpaper, the surface is polished and acquires a smooth surface, pleasant to the touch. Well, that's it, my "work report" has come to an end. In it, I told in detail and showed all my secrets, many asked me about this. Maybe other masters do it differently, and this is their right. Everyone has their own approach, their own technology. I tried for you and for those people who will hold this edged weapon in their hands, let them feel the tenderness and warmth of not only the wood from which this handle is made, but also a particle of the master's soul.

Sincerely!
Valery Prostyankin.

Local method of etching a pattern on metal

Hello! Today I want to talk about another method on metal. This is an etching method. Let's say you already have a wonderful shape, and now you need to decorate it with some "cool" pattern. You can draw a drawing yourself, or download ready-made ones on the Internet by printing them on a printer. We will also need ordinary adhesive tape in order to make a sticker. Scotch is important to take good quality. The higher the quality of the tape, the easier it will be for you to work with it. Cut off a strip of adhesive tape, and stick the prepared pattern on its sticky surface, image down. Now rinse off the paper with hot water. The drawing will be printed on tape.

By the way, applying an image for etching with is applicable only with a pattern printed on a laser printer. An inkjet print will wash out along with the paper. Rinse off the paper as thoroughly as possible. You can use a toothbrush for this. Now we just have to wait until it all dries and continue to work.

Let's take our pride and degrease its surface. We will degrease with alcohol. If you don't feel like spending so much useful product»for some kind of degreasing - use acetone, or any other liquid that can degrease the metal surface. Now carefully stick the tape to the place of the blade where you want to see the pattern. Stick the adhesive tape very tightly, without air bubbles, smoothing it over the surface of the blade with a cloth.

The next step is cutting the pattern. To cut neatly through the contour, without scuffing the tape, use the following method. Take an awl and heat it on a gas burner. Carefully burn the outlines of the pattern. Well, you probably used a wood burner as a child, didn't you? So it's almost the same, only we will burn out the metal.

By the way, the thought came to me, and not to use instead of the etching method proposed by the author, heating the awl, really a wood burner, with a thin tip. It will be easier than rushing to the gas burner every time to heat the cooling awl.

So, we burn the outline of the picture and remove all unnecessary. It turned out something like this.

Now we need to remove traces of glue.By the way, we first need to make a special device for etching on metal. For this device, you need a power supply from 4 to 9 volts and a pair of copper wire. Any phone charger can be used.

To remove the adhesive from the adhesive tape from the metal surface, put the negative wire on the knife, and the positive wire on a cotton swab dipped in a strong saline solution, and start blotting with a cotton swab. The glue should curl up.

Everything, having cleared the drawing of glue, we proceed directly to the etching of the drawing on the metal. To do this, we change the polarity of our device, that is, we attach the positive end of the wire to the knife. Put a piece of cotton wool in a piece of bandage and, after soaking it in a saline solution, attach it to the drawing so that it completely covers it. We put the negative wire on top, and fix it with adhesive tape. We turn on the power supply to the outlet and wait for twenty-five minutes. Be careful during the etching process and step aside for this time. Because with this, poisonous chlorine gas is released. And although it is released in a fairly small amount, it is still better not to inhale it.

If the quality of etching does not suit you, repeat the procedure again with fresh cotton wool. Naturally, it will take you much less time to re-etch.Here's the resulting image.

It remains to thoroughly rinse and clean the surface of the knife. Everything, the work is finished, and we got by etching, here is such an image of a bull on the surface of the blade.

Greetings to those who like to craft and work with metal. In this manual, we will talk about the simplest homemade knife that you can easily do with your own hands. Making such a knife is not difficult, it is even very simple. Of the most complex and expensive machines that the author has used is a belt grinder. But it is needed mainly in order to make bevels. In general, this procedure can be dealt with with files, and grinding is done manually with sandpaper.

This knife is interesting for its unique pattern, it is made by etching. Such a pattern will be durable, it will make your knife unique. You can make an inscription or any pattern of your choice. And in order for the knife to turn out to be of high quality, you need to use good steel, it must contain as much carbon as possible, then it can be hardened. Similar steel can be found among various cutters, tools, and so on. The key feature of this steel is that when cut, very thick sparks are obtained. If you work with ordinary steel at low speeds, you may not see sparks at all, but carbon steel will form sparks. Abroad, craftsmen use steel O1, 1095 and others like it. So, let's take a closer look at how to make such a knife!

Materials and tools used by the author:

List of materials:
- carbon steel;
- wood for overlays;
- brass rods, tubes and so on (for pins);
- epoxy glue and dye;
- wood impregnation oil.

List of tools:
- Bulgarian;
- belt sander;
- Bulgarian;
- marker;
- drill;
- vice;
- clamps;
- drill;
- power supply, saline solution, etc. (for etching);
- sandpaper;
- files;
- tool for sharpening knives.

Knife making process:

Step one. Cut out the main profile
We simply cut out the main profile with the help of a grinder. We cut out the concave places in pieces, making transverse cuts. If you have a band cutter, this task can be done much faster.

Well, then we proceed to polishing those places that we could not cut off. For these purposes, we again work with the help of a grinder. This time we need a thick grinding disc. With it, we bring the contour to an almost finished look.
For finer work, we use a belt sander. We also grind the plane of the blade.

Step two. Drilling holes for pins
We drill holes for the pins in the handle area. They should be of such a diameter that the pins enter with a minimum clearance, then the handle will hold as securely as possible. The author clamps the blade in a vise and drills holes with a conventional drill. Steel must not be hardened, otherwise it can only be drilled with a special drill with a carbide tip.

Step three. We form bevels
Now we have to form the bevels on the blade. Thus, we will set the main cutting characteristics of the knife. In order for the knife to cut perfectly, the bevels must be as smooth as possible. But to teach the rigidity of the blade, they can be done at a more right angle. For such work, the author uses a belt grinder, on which this is done simply and conveniently. First, we take a drill of the same thickness as the thickness of the workpiece and draw a centering line along the blade. And to make it clearly visible, the metal can be preliminarily painted over with a marker. We will use this line as a guideline so that the bevels are symmetrical.

Now we fasten the blade to a wooden block or use a special clamp, that's all, you can start grinding. When grinding, the metal heats up, just holding the blade in your hands will be problematic. We try not to overheat the metal when grinding. If the blade will be hardened, the blade is not sharpened, its very minimum thickness should be 2 mm. Otherwise, alloying additives can burn out from the metal, and the steel will turn into ordinary raw material.

Step four. Heat treatment of metal
Heat treatment includes two stages, quenching and tempering. Temperature conditions and the medium for hardening are selected depending on the grade of steel. In most cases, knife steels are hardened in oil, and they need to be heated to a red or sometimes yellowish glow. If hardening is successful, the blade will no longer be taken with a file, while the metal will be brittle.

After hardening, a procedure called tempering follows. To understand to what temperature to heat the metal, it is advisable to grind the blade before tempering. When its color changes to straw, this will indicate that the vacation was a success. On average, the blades are heated for about an hour at a temperature of 200 degrees using an oven. Steel should cool down smoothly, along with the oven.

Step five. Grinding
After heat treatment, a dark coating forms on the metal, which is the result of oxidation. This whole thing needs to be cleaned up. To do this, use sandpaper dipped in water. You can also go over the blade on a belt sander. As a result, the blade can be polished, thereby preparing for etching.

Step six. Handle Assembly
The pen is dominated by dark tones, as the author intended. To make it look interesting, we take a drill and make cuts along the handle on the blade. When these parts are filled with epoxy with black dye, everything will look great.

You can also come up with interesting pins. You can take a copper or brass tube, come up with an interesting filler and then fill the tubes with epoxy resin with dye.

We cut out the overlays, for this we use a dark-colored tree. If desired, you can use a stain or dark-colored oil. The overlays should turn out to be two pieces approximately the same in shape. That's all, you can collect the pen. We carefully clean the surfaces to be glued so that the glue adheres well. Metal can be processed with coarse sandpaper, so the glue will stick much better. As glue, the author used epoxy with the addition of a dark color dye.

We clamp the handle with clamps, this will evenly stick together with overlays along the entire length. Well, then we wait a day, after which it will be possible to confidently process the pen.

At the end, we proceed to grinding the handle, we form the desired shape. This can be done with a grinder, with a drill, or even by hand using files and sandpaper. We make the handle perfectly smooth. At the end, the handle must be soaked in oil, so the wood will be protected from moisture, and the handle will look great.

Step seven. Picture etching
The pattern on the blade makes the knife unique. For this procedure, we use a power supply, and we will also need water with ordinary table salt, the concentration should be maximum. We draw a drawing on the blade, paint over everything else with varnish or paint. Where the metal surface is exposed, etching will occur.

share personal experience in this seemingly simple matter.
Because I am a radio amateur, I often do printed circuit boards technique LUT (Laser-ironing technology). Recently, a fellow biker asked me a question: is it possible to pickle steel to make different fuss and how exactly to do it. A rush of the Internet, I was convinced that a solution of ferric chloride in water eats not only copper on textolite, but also almost any iron. What I was able to verify when it spilled onto my galvanized balcony sheet and the very next day I saw decent holes there ... In short, I thought, purkua would not have been pa ...
So we need:
Ferric chloride 200g (70 rubles)
Water 0.5 liters (from the tap)
Printer LASER black and white.
A sheet of paper with text and the least number of pictures from Popular Mechanics or Iron magazine. For some reason, the printer chews paper from Lisa magazines and others ...
Iron.
Comp with Word or any graphic editor who cares. I did it in Word, where the drawing is easiest to stretch as you like.
Sample drawing - took on tattoo sites.
Technology.
Choose a drawing and stretch it as you like.
We take a knife or a piece of iron, we clean it with a zero sandpaper.
We print the drawing on the area with the text of the prepared sheet.
We put it on a knife and iron it with a hot iron until it sticks and the toner slightly comes through the paper.
If necessary, we do the same on the second side of the knife.
We put the knife under water (in a bowl or ladle) for 5-10 minutes.
Fingers begin to rub on paper. The paper rolls and the toner remains on the metal.
If the toner tears, then re-skin and make drawings on the new one and iron it harder and longer.
After that, we protect the rest of the surface of the knife where there will be no etching or by painting it with paint, NC varnish, bituminous varnish. I, in my immeasurable laziness, completely wrapped it with tape ...
So so. IMPORTANT. If you want the etching to be of high quality, you will have to go over the drawing from above or with a marker with paint. Those. something to “strengthen” it, because the toner sticks with small holes and there will be undercuts. The same applies to minor flaws in the translation of the picture.
We put an object with a pattern into a solution of 200 g of ferric chloride in 500 ml of water. (Dissolve not all at once, but in parts - it heats up).
Periodically we take it out and pass it under running water with a paint brush. After a couple of hours, we get a noticeable etching of 0.3-0.5 mm.
Then we overwrite everything with sandpaper and polish or not polish ... Depending on laziness

A sample of the resulting bottom. As I said, the undergrass turned out, but this gave the ornament so to speak ... old or something ...








Of course it turned out so-so, but not bad for the first time
P.S / Any etching and inscriptions make the knife less durable and it usually breaks just along the etching line.
All success. 73!