Thread: Restoring an Etch

What I forgot to say was that I have in the near-recent past tried to clean carefully over an etch, and felt that I had reduced its visibility. On having put this aside for a couple of months, I have found - on revisiting it - that it has regained its (limited) visibility as it seems to have 're-patinated' (if that is a word) to some extent.

I have photos of this saws etch that I took some time ago ... it will be interesting to see if it looks any different (to now) in a month or two.

Paul.

I wouldn't use fingers and paper when sanding the etch. Fingers are soft and will push the abrasive into the etch. Better with abrasive glued to a small board or block and sanding lightly over the etch and checking constantly. I fear have learnt this with experience. As for enhancing the etch I would stick with the bluing agent rather than fiddling about with different acids jellies etc. Gun blue is made to blue steel. Follow the instructions, light sand back, repeat until desired effect is achieved (or you've sanded through to the other side of the blade. Whoops).

We must remember that we'll never get it back to pristine. These are old tools and more often than not pretty rusty before we get to have a go at them. It is good fun trying though isn't it?

Keep us updated with your progress.

Cheers,
Virg.

I have been mucking about with this today using the brass darkening solution as per Bob Sturgeon. For any one in Sydney this is available from Mother of Pearl and Sons. The saw is a Disston 5. Its the top one:
IMG_0019[1].jpg
When I started the etch was there but as silver as the saw plate. After 4-5 with the solution this is the result (which i am pretty happy with) :
photo (12).jpg

I like it!

What did you do for pre-cleaning and post-cleaning?

Good job PM.

Cheers,
PM.

Pre cleaning was scraped with a stanley blade then sandpaper glued to a block using detergent as a lubricant. That was back in December.

Today i wiped it over painted the stuff on and used 400 wet and dry on a wood block in between coats. W and D was lubricated with G15.

Probabaly need to go back and address some of those cows and calves though. Now that i have seen them close up.

Originally Posted by Pac man

Probabaly need to go back and address some of those cows and calves though. Now that i have seen them close up.

Proof. Pudding. How does it feel to use?

Cuts a dead straight line in hardwood at 19mm thick and less. Jams a bit in thicker softwood - hardly any set on it.

I think the saw is telling me it will be ok

Originally Posted by Pac man

Probabaly need to go back and address some of those cows and calves though. Now that i have seen them close up.

Looks pretty reasonable to me! Not much wildlife there. (I think the camera has put a bit of a wave into the photo.)

One of the advantages to hand-filing is supposed to be the natural variations introduced in the process vs machine-like regularity
... like with the liogier rasps & files ...

except with experience ... I assume you get more uniform and regular
Hmmm

What sort of filing did you put on it?

Thanks,
paul

Rip. Dont know teeth PPI or TPI as i dint count it. Hardly any set. Fleam?Rake? Just angled the file how the teeth were set in the first place.

Sorry this is probably not helpful. Saw jargon is my third language

Originally Posted by Pac man

When I started the etch was there but as silver as the saw plate. After 4-5 with the solution this is the result (which i am pretty happy with) :
photo (12).jpg

Thanks for the info Pacman. I ordered some from Watson Brass (watsonbrass.com.au) and it turned up today.

The image on the website looks like ...

But what I got was:

BDS 009.jpg

So, I was on my guard a bit. I tried it on the Spear & Jackson 888 I am working on ... it basically had no effect at all.

It has seen a lot of WD40 and then the Phosporic Acid that I tried on it ... so I will give it a go again tomorrow after I get some acetone to wipe it down with.
There may be something different about the sawblade and etch vs older saws ... see below.

I took one of the saw-chest saws ... a moderate condition #7 ... the bottom one here ... I haven't cleaned it up from then ...
https://www.woodworkforums.com/attach...saws-2-055.jpg

The etch looked fairly reasonable on a less-than-clean saw-blade.

BDS 004.jpg

This saw has not had any WD40 or etc so I gave it a light sand-over and a wipe, then created a pool of the liquid over the etch section and left for about 10 minutes. Cleaning off the remains, it had created a darkened area on the saw-blade ... much like the phosphoric acid did.

Sanding over the darkened area, the etch was probably enhanced - I haven't made a close comparison of the photos, but the rest of the saw-blade was cleaned or possibly smoothed. In any case, a good result.

BDS 005.jpg BDS 008.jpg

I still prefer hand-rubbing to the sanding-block. For one, you can direct the sanding effort to a few square cms, rather than a hand-sized area - although I guess you could make smaller blocks. Also the sanding was done putting almost no finger pressure onto the abrasive ... and you can lighten up or not at will.

I will also find another old etch like this one ... might use the same one if I have to ... to test the phosphoric acid again.

Thanks Pacman.
Paul.