thank you
I understand why the museums dislike this method...... after all you have to polish the blade to 600grit prior to dipping the blade in the acid.. .. all of the hilt material would also have to be removed to have a bare blade...
-but the method in my article should be used on homemade crucible steel because i have no idea how it would work with ancient blades... (not brave enough to try it)
i'm not sure there is a way to show the pattern without etch... ... all the methods i've read of .... or tried that yielded results were with acid.
- perhaps there is a way of finding a coating that will bond only with the steel matrix, leaving the carbides...... but that wouldn't be remotely similar to the ancient methods...
check out this post.....
http://www.knifenetwork.com/forum/sh...ad.php?t=29896
apparently one knife was etched in " Kvas" .... a Russian rye beer .....
- so there are some methods that can yield results.... and in this special case you could quench your thirst at the same time
personally.... I've seen on the net a knife etched by jeff pringle ....and this was done with iron sulphate cut with sulphuric acid... it was marvelous and looked almost identical to the etch of many Indian blades.
so far I like nital alot......when properly etched.... you can see fantastic detail that was hidden beforehand. Although I would luv to have a darker blueish purple for the steel matrix.... I can't really complain because my first goal was to have extreme clarity of the pattern..... which is why I get a little upset when folks use ferric chloride to etch wootz... its just a poor etchent for this particular task...
just my opinion
Greg