Etching Damascus

I have a question. I have always used Ferric Cloride to etch Damascus, then added instant coffee to get more contrast. Now a lot of my fellow knife makers are using Gator Piss. I looked up the ingredients and one of the big ones is Hydracloric acid and distilled water with a couple of other chemicals. Why not just use diluted Hydrochloric acid or Muratic acid (my understanding is this is diluted Hydrochloric acid?) ? Is there a reason as to why no one does this. I actually watched a video on YouTube of Indian makers doing just that. More research I did I found a drain cleaner called Rootor with Sulfuric Acid. Has anyone tried this?? Curious in Massachusetts!

Good questions - I've etched Damascus the same way you do, but after seeing that video with the Indian knifemakers (lockbacks?) using sulfuric acid to etch with I've been wondering myself. Get some battery acid (which is around 30% sulfuric acid), but not sure how strong the acid needs to be. Seems like that might be a tad strong. AutoZone has a qt for $12 - I might pick up a qt today and try it.

I picked up the qt of sulfuric acid for batteries. This image is zoomed in too much, but can't get it right with cropping, etc. This is about 20 minutes in full strength battery acid. Took it out around 10 min and lightly sanded with 800 grit, then back in for another 10 minutes. It looks better in real than the photo. It does work, but I think I like the FeCl followed up with coffee better. I'll try to get a coffee added to this later.

The billet was etched, but lightly. I put a 400 grit belt on the grinder and cleaned it up so no etching was showing. The break point is visible, and the old etch shows at bottom of image. I didn't take much time with this, just wanted to see if sulfuric acid would do much at all. Perhaps diluted would be better? The etch in the video sure did look good.

I used hydrochoric acid years ago, but ferric Chloride seems to give a better etch. The hydrochloric seems like it etches both steels together. That was full strength, perhaps if it was diluted it would be different. I suspect that if there was something “better” than FC, we would have heard about it. Haven’t tried Gator Piss yet, but a lot of people seem to like it.

I'm just sick of paying for the newest thing. $60 a gallon plus shipping from Baker Forge for Gator Piss when the 2 main items are Hydrochloric acid and Distilled water to me is high. I have a quart of that Rooto drain cleaner I may play with. I did a stone wash on an 01 blade I'm working on to see if it would work. Nicest sone wash I've done IMO. Thinking with some tweaking it may work. I have a piece of Pakistani Demascus I've been using for guards. I have a couple knives that need guards so when I get on those I will make the guards out of that and give it a shot.

I got some GatorPiss a while back. I was using diluted Ferric Chloride, but wanted to try something different. I usually take my blade up to 800-1500 hand rub before acid etching for damascus. With Gator Piss, I can get visual contrast quickly, but the steel surface is still smooth and shiny. With Ferric, the surface is rougher and more pitted and takes longer to get a nice dark color. For kitchen knives, this means it seems to stay smoother feeling and not as grabby when cutting stuff like Onions. I used to do a quick etch in Ferric to bring out the contrast visually and leave it more of a light grey color to keep the surface smooth. I can do darker with GP and still have a smoother surface.

These pics are Gator Piss I think with a VSM compact grain 800 grit belt finish IIRC:




Versus the lighter grey I did with Ferric so the surface wouldn't feel as rough after a 1000 grit hand rub finish.