Surface coatings

[Grahame Collins]

I have seen some pics surface coatings on forged items but sadly could not find details of same .The surface coating appears to be a black finish and is satin type finish.

I found tips about beeswax and linseed oil and applied it to my fabbed tongs ( yes I know its not very blacksmith like -ecetera )- but I have an anvil, but no forge as yet)

I am looking for that black durable finish but obviously an ingredient is missing. I have read about plumbago in a black smith forum but Google says plumbago is a bloody flower. How to I get from flower to blackened tools ?

The pic shows the beeswax and linseed coating which when dry seems a fairly good as a rust preventative ,being left out in the dew- didn't start to rust as other bare steel does.
Would quenching in oil do it - like a blueing effect. If so, what sort of oil? 358227 and I can beeswax over it.?

Still, I would like to more blackening so the shiny bits don't show.- if any body has knowledge or can direct me to a link -thank you

Your knowledge and assistance on this subject will be appreciated.

Thanks Grahame

[Michael G]

Would quenching in oil do it - like a blueing effect? If so, what sort of oil?

The blackest dirtiest oil you can find. One of the fitters at work had to do some blackening and none of our 'dirty' oil was bad enough so he popped next door to a truck yard and got a small quantity of used oil from a semi engine. Wonderful results and now he won't use anything but used diesel oil.

Michael

[Ueee]

I find coating in linseed oil and burning in the fire works well, i often use the pot belly fire when it is on.

[Jekyll and Hyde]

The blackest dirtiest oil you can find. One of the fitters at work had to do some blackening and none of our 'dirty' oil was bad enough so he popped next door to a truck yard and got a small quantity of used oil from a semi engine. Wonderful results and now he won't use anything but used diesel oil.

Michael

+1. I've got a few litres of used engine oil out of my diesel 4wd sitting around for just that reason. Comes out nice and black, and doesn't appear to wear off. Can be made darker with multiple cycles... The lathe tool below was done this way.

358230

[soundman]

I few years ago I did some research and experiments with black japan ..... which is what a lot of metal tools where finished in before the funky enamels and powder coat .

So what ya looking for is Asphaltum (powdered asphalt) ..... get this from an art supplies ... I have some .... a little goes a long way.

the rest is simple to come by

From memory a traditional recipe is
equal parts of shelac, boiled linssed oil, metho and turps then add some asphaltum till it looks dirty and thickes a bit ........ cant remember the proportions of asphalt.

I don't believe the proportions are particularly important

I tried replacing the metho and turps with GP thinners and it worked just as well.

ya put all this in a jar and shale the bjesus out of it and leave it sit a day or two shaking.

the asphaltum will take a wile to sort of disolve...it never disolves completely.

this you paint on it looks like a bit like weak sump oil. let it dry off ... it will go tacky ..... with care you can do another application..... let that go tacky ....... it pretty much never dries properly.

Then stic it in SHMBO's oven while she is out. I recon its better to go into a cold oven set to ..... oooo .... 180ishC for an hour ........ open the door and let it cool in the oven or take it out rack and all ...... the finish will still be soft.

once cooled this stuff goes off hard and black ..... not much thickness to it so it will show grain & form .... but it seems pretty durable.


worth a try and a fiddle.

cheers

[soundman]

you could also investigate "parkerising".

Black super etch, baked at 100ish C then waxed while warm looks pretty convincing.

ordinary black enamel paint bakes up pretty well.

Of couse there is always black slops .... I have a tin I pour dregs of everything black into, usually ends up a bit pissy ...... but it gives a cheap nasty black finish.

The 50/50 linseed and shelac from the japan would work as a fairly durable sort of clearish thing.

cheers

[Grahame Collins]

Thanks for the replies fellas.

All very useful.

I already have a phosphating set up using maganese dioxide.I must admit I had forgotten about it.

The asphaltum powder seems no longer avaliable here is Aus is it is deemed an inflammable hazard by the safety police.

I found asphaltum listed among the oil paint listed in an art shop google.

Also a found a past post in the Woodwork forum by someone who had the answer above from Jacksons circa 2011.

The diesel motor oil is something I'll try.

I have the linseed so I'll barbecue some coated metal , maybe after a fathers day lunch on Sunday.

However what I won't do is do anything in her ladyship's oven. Crikey! you are a brave bugger.
I have no sense of smell so I would have absolutely no hope of knowing if any odour remained and therefore no likely success in concealing the evidence.

[BobL]

Plumbago is a form of lead oxide - not nice.
OR
Powdered Graphite - much better and readily available.

[QUOTE]The pic shows the beeswax and linseed coating which when dry seems a fairly good as a rust preventative ,being left out in the dew- didn't start to rust as other bare steel does.
My Nephew uses beeswax on not quite red hot stuff, smokes like crazy and catches fire - looks OK


Would quenching in oil do it - like a blueing effect. If so, what sort of oil? and I can beeswax over it.?
Picture shows an example (Not mine but) of a sump oil quench.
Sump oil has all sorts of nasty carcinogens and metals.
If you don't want to use thatm then heavy gear oil does a good job.
http://metalworkforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=358233&stc=1


Still, I would like to more blackening so the shiny bits don't show.- if any body has knowledge or can direct me to a link -thank you



Also a found a past post in the Woodwork forum by someone who had the answer above from Jacksons circa 2011.
That was probably me - I had to order in in especially and they looked at me like I was asking for something out of the Ark.

A more acceptable substitute than a kitchen oven is usually a BBQ oven

[DSEL74]

There is a thread here in the smithy for the Plumbago I'm sure.

[soundman]

If ya cant get powdered asphalt ..... I recon you could use pretty much any liquid tar/asphalt/bitumen product in its place. it would already be disolved in solvent so less mineral solvent required.

cheers

[BobL]

There is a thread here in the smithy for the Plumbago I'm sure.
http://www.woodworkforums.com/showthread.php?t=177879

[Grahame Collins]

Thanks fellas,
If I can get a hold of the artists oil Asphlatum locally with out too much bother,I'll give it a try.Other wise I will go with the graphite powder.


Grahame

[soundman]

hell Grahame ... if ya want some, I'll put a bit in the post for ya.

cheers

[Marc]

Plumbago is an ancient name for graphite. Definitely not another product. Just graphite.

The best source of graphite without paying premium price for ultra fine lubricant, is release agent for artist casting. Cheapest is in the UK but we have one in Adelaide too.
Graphite Powder 325 Mesh - 1kg [AMP-9000-1] - $31.50 : Adelaide Moulding & Casting Supplies (http://www.amcsupplies.com.au/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2110_2111_2112&products_id=5683)
The Stick That Left A Mark (https://umeshmadan.wordpress.com/2008/09/24/the-stick-that-left-a-mark/)September 24, 2008

Lead pencils have always been made of graphite. There has never been a pinch of lead, or asbestos, in lead pencils – much to the dismay of lawyers everywhere. Graphite has always been non-toxic.
The confusion began with the English, who started using a new mineral called plumbago to write and draw with. In the late 16th century, the residents of Seathwaite (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_Knotts) in Barrowdale, Cumbria, had stumbled upon a deposit of an intriguing new mineral (http://www.lakestay.co.uk/wad.htm). The mineral had interesting physical properties – it shimmered, it was solid and black, had a greasy feel and left a mark upon your hands when rubbed. The mineral was so much like the lead ores found at the time that the residents called it plumbago – which is Latin for lead ore, or colloquially, black lead. The locals soon began using the material to mark their sheep, which they had in plenty. Before long, someone found that plumbago also made excellent marks on paper. And because the mineral was so solid and pure, it could be sawed into a stick, wrapped in a bit of sheep skin and carried around. Presumably, among the first uses of this new mobile writing device was to annotate the walls of tavern bathrooms with philosophical commentary.
Creating a proper holder for the plumbago sticks was the logical next step. At first people took to wrapping the sticks in twine. Then someone borrowed a technique already used to make silverpoint (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_point)styluses, and enclosed the lead with a piece of wood. The convenient little writing sticks in their wood holders came to be known as lead pencils (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=pencil). Their existence was first documented by the zoologist Conrad Gesner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_Gesner) in 1565. Eventually, someone realized that easiest way to make a pencil was to place the lead between two pieces of wood (http://www.pencilpages.com/gallery/oldest.htm) and glue the pieces together. Pencils as we know them began to emerge.
Lead pencils were revolutionary and caused a sensation, especially among artists. Unlike pen and ink, the pencils were highly portable. Unlike charcoal, the pencils could be shaped and sharpened to a point, giving the artist the precision of a metal point. And unlike silverpoint, which required specially coated paper, the versatile new pencils worked on just about anything. Better still, artists could use a piece of white bread left over from their lunch to erase their drawings and start over.
England enjoyed a monopoly on pencil manufacture for nearly a hundred years. For no matter how hard they looked, no one could find a second deposit of plumbago that could be cut into sticks and used to make pencils. There was plenty of plumbago to be had, but just not the right sort. Any ore not mined in Barrowdale tended to be impure and the purification process only yielded black lead in fine powder form. To break the English hold, someone had to figure out how to turn the powder into solid plumbago sticks. In 1662, a German pencil maker from Nuremberg finally did. He combined plumbago powder with sulphur and antimony to make pencil lead. The pencil maker’s name was Friedrich Staedtler. If his name sounds familiar, it is because to this day, Staedtler (http://www.staedtler.com/home_gb.Staedtler) remains a maker of the world’s finest writing instruments. But in 1662, Staedtler’s new pencil lead, though functional, was too coarse and could not match the quality of the original English product. The best pencil lead in the world continued to come from a single mine in Cumbria. Nevertheless, with demand booming, Nuremberg became a major exporter of lead pencils. The city’s atmosphere proved to be specially conducive to pencil making. The famed pencil manufacturer Faber-Castell (http://www.faber-castell.us/) also got its start in Nuremberg in 1761.
The 18th century was a time of great fundamental discoveries in chemistry. The brilliant Swiss chemist C.W.Scheele (http://www.chemistryexplained.com/Ru-Sp/Scheele-Carl.html), who had a genius for experimentation, had already made several important breakthroughs. In 1779, he turned his attention to plumbago and conclusively proved that black lead wasn’t lead at all. Black lead was in fact carbon. Class action lawyers have hated Scheele ever since. What could have been a landmark lawsuit featuring billions of tiny tots slowly poisoning themselves by sucking on lead pencil tips (you can imagine the television commercials )… turned out to be tiny tots sucking on carbon – the stuff we are made of. Plumbago came to be known as graphite (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=graphite) – so named by Abraham Werner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Werner), from the Greek graphein, or “write”.
A few years later, the English monopoly on pure high grade graphite ended. In 1790, an Austrian inventor named Joseph Hardtmuth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Hardtmuth)combined graphite powder, clay and water to make – well, spaghetti. He then cooked the graphite spaghetti in an oven until it hardened and he had himself some pencil lead of impeccable quality. Not only was his new lead cheaper, but its hardness and color could also be varied by altering the proportions of graphite and clay. When Hardtmuth wanted a softer pencil, he used more graphite. When he wanted a harder one, he used more clay.
Before Hardtmuth could say voila, the French stumbled upon an identical solution, or possibly appropriated his – no one can know. In 1795, the new French Republic was at odds with the English and the Germans (they took turns being at odds and still are). An economic blockade had cut off all imports of pencils into France. And so Nicolas-Jacques Conté (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Jacques_Cont%C3%A9) decided to make his own. He used a process virtually identical to that used by the Austrians. His new pencils were square in cross section and encased in a cylinder of wood. He called them crayons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cont%C3%A9_crayons.JPG). You can still buy Conte’s crayons (http://www.cheapjoes.com/art-supplies/7612_conte-crayon-sets.asp) at an art store or on the Internet.
It was left to two American cabinet makers, William Monroe and Ebenezer Wood, to put on the finishing touches on the modern pencil and automate its manufacture. By 1812, they had turned their home town of Concord, MA, into a hotbed of pencil innovation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashoba_Brook_Pencil_Factory_Site). It was Ebenezer Wood (http://www.actontrails.org/EAPencils.htm) who made the first hexagonal pencils. He took two hexagonal pieces of grooved cedar wood, placed the pencil lead in between and glued the two pieces together. And he did so using machines. His pencils would not have looked too different from the ones you buy today at Target. By the close of the 19th century, pencils had acquired built in erasers and were mass produced. In the 21st century, they are made in the billions each year – in China, naturally.
The Barrowdale plumbago mine where it all began was closed in the late 19th century. The deposit remains the only known instance of pure graphite ever found in such form!

[YBAF]

...that black lead wasn’t lead at all. Black lead was in fact carbon. Class action lawyers have hated Scheele ever since. What could have been a landmark lawsuit featuring billions of tiny tots slowly poisoning themselves by sucking on lead pencil tips (you can imagine the television commercials )… turned out to be tiny tots sucking on carbon – the stuff we are made of...


Yer not keeping up with the times Marc. 'The sky is falling' nutters classify carbon as a pollutant now. :U

[Oldneweng]

He took two hexagonal pieces of grooved cedar wood, placed the pencil lead in between and glued the two pieces together.

Say what? How do you join 2 hexagonal pieces to create a hexagonal piece? End to end? :D

Thanks for the story Marc. You learn something every day.

Dean

[Marc]

Yer not keeping up with the times Marc. 'The sky is falling' nutters classify carbon as a pollutant now. :U

Oh I am up with those times believe you me.
"Low carbon" and "decarbonising" and "Carbon footprint" are probably the most absurd politically motivated invention of all times ... but hey, bread and circus .. right?

As far as gluing two hexagonal pieces together with a stick of graphite between them would give an odd looking pencil ... :)

Graham ... blacksmith tools usually need no coating but if you use them very little, a good clean up with a grinder powered steel brush and a rub with graphite will keep them looking good.

Your blacksmith production can be made look real good if you paint it with oil based paint, possibly rust colour red, and then rub the graphite on the paint when it is still a bit tacky. If you leave some streak of red here and there, it will have the metal colour of graphite and appear to be lightly rusted.