[A. G. Maisey]

Sid, it is a bit difficult to say what is "normal" & what is not, there are far too many variables, in my experience arsenic is necessary to make the ferric material turn black and leave the nickel as silver.

If all we want to do is to read the pamor, I think a vinegar stain is as good as anything, in some cases, maybe preferable to anything else.

Ferric chloride and hydrochloric (muriatic) acid both work to permit us to read a pattern but they do not give a nice deep blue-black.

Nital I've never tried.

The job does take repetition, and the blade must be back to clean white before beginning.

There is an additional step that is used sometimes by some people, but I am not prepared to put that up for all the world to see.

The actual number of times you need to apply the warangan varies, but it needs to be rubbed into the blade repeatedly until the point where the blade is very sticky, the amount of warangan solution that you put on the brush does not wet the blade, you use an old, worn soft toothbrush and you use it just damp, not dripping wet, work it back & forth on the blade repeatedly, test stickyness of the blade with a finger tip, when the blade adheres solidly to your finger tip, rinse, pat dry with a lint free cloth, dry both sides in the sun, then repeat --- five times or fifty times or 50 thousand times --- eventually you will have something that looks like it should.

Think of the whole process as a form of active meditation.

Incidentally, the first blade I ever stained when I was a kid was done with sulphur, salt & rice water, blade covered in a wet paste of this stuff, wrapped in sandwich wrap, left for a week, the result was more or less OK.