I can tell you this opinel has seen a lot of abuse without failing me. Because it is so cheap, I always thought I would break it from over-abuse. It has been also a great knife when renting a vacation home (knives there are always extremely bad). It is not a big deal: I bought it was to have a cheap knife to be able to do all the staff you do not want your nice blades to do (cutting bones/frozen food/card boards/cut on glass) while still being able to have a super sharp edge after a super quick and dirty resharpening. So my 7 years old Opinel n☁2 has to be renewed. So now, the knife is functional but I cannot close it. I manage to put it back but I got never perfectly aligned. I have all the good tools to do so, but I think it is not doable without a press. At mid way through, I did not manage to remove the piece of metal holding the blade in the handle. I never managed to disassemble it properly. ATTENTION: Since I liked it I have decide to do the same on my Opinel n☁2 (12 cm blade). I am quite pleased with the result, I think it black enough. Now it is smooth and I believe this patina is going to be durable. It was also quite not smooth after the vinegar and I really think that if you do not clean them with the back side of a sponge it will cause a lot of drag. It came out very black, but I cleaned it a lot, it has lost quite of its "blackness" during this step. I used quite some tea and did 2 bathes of 1 hours each. So many guests have complimented us on them because they look like very cool antique knives, that my wife has finally started to think that maybe carbon steel has a place at the table. It disappeared after a few weeks of use.Īfter 5 months of constant use, they still look exactly like they did after I took them out of the boiling vinegar. You can't really see it with the naked eye unless you tilt the blade just right in the light. It had an effect, but strangely, when I wiped it off, it just resulted in a slightly less tarnished ring of 0.5mm around the perimeter of the mustard drop. To test the efficacy of the protective coating, I put a drop of regular yellow mustard and left it on the blade for 5 minutes. It got very dark, but nowhere near as dark as the Opinel shown in the prior post above. I did the brushed boiling vinegar trick for another 10 minutes or so. I decided to go whole hog and just blacken the damn thing. My method was to boil 1 cup of vinegar 10% vinegar in a 12 inch saucepan, then brush it on with a basting brush. Needless to say I went with the carbon.Īnd here is the pic after brushing it with boiling vinegar for 5 minutes. The pic is of 3 different knives that I bought as potential steak knife candidates, the carbon steel one is at the bottom, it's stainless twin is right above it. Here is the before and after on a carbon steel Au Sabot paring knife that I forced a patina on. For me, the pragmatic choice is forced patina Alternatively, I could buy insipid steak knives at Target made out of 420j, divorce my wife, or excuse myself every acidic course in the meal "hold that thought, please excuse me while I wash my knife again.". A very practical way to keep them from looking like a stained mess is to force the patina everywhere. Why don't we just buy some nice Calphalon ones at Target?.". That makes the wife not like them "These look yard-sale junk. Two hours after a meal with med rare steak, tomatoes, and other acidic foods, a new carbon steel steak knife doesn't look so hot. If you're married, forcing a patina on my carbon steel steak knife is the most practical thing you can do.Ī good meal with friends can last a few hours.
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