OK, I am fiddling with a new ( to me ) antiquing technique for knife blanks.  I sand blasted 6 blades, cold rust blued the blanks, and then put them in bleach to etch.  The antiquing was supposed to take 20 minutes.  I pulled the blades out of the etch at 20 minutes.  Scrubbed them in soapy water and nope, not what I expected.

The blades had brown gunk all over them when I pulled them out.  When I scrubbed them off the bluing was only partially removed.  I put them back in the etch and pulled them out for a cleaning on the hour every hour for 6 hours.  Still not what I was expecting.

I think I am missing something and was wondering if anyone here using this technique to create an antiqued blade.

I used cold bluing as the coloring compound, I used standard laundry bleach as the etch.  No dilution with water.  The temp was right around 55 degrees.

what are you looking for.  I wanted mine to be rusted with mild pitting.  Use Laural Mt Browning suggested by Dan Winkler...tippit  

 

 

Tippit,  

I want the finish to be a rough or mottled looking surface with minor pitting. I want the overall blade to be a lightly buffed aged silver look in the high spots and flats with darker areas left over in the deeper etched spots.I am going to take steel wool to the blades tonight and see what the actual finish turned out like.  

What do you buff the rust off of your blades with. I am assuming you don't leave the blades in the pics that way, or is that last pic the finished product?    I am not looking for a rust black finish on these particular blades.  I will use the browning material and boiling on some  future blades.

I wanted it to look like it was dug up.  So I rubbed it with oil and old denim.  The last picture is the way it looks and hasn't rusted any further.  The surface is very rough but not as rough as using clorox.

forget all that hard stuff,   get some Mark Lee Express Brown from Brownells,  follow the directions, works great.