I have a thing for traditional weapons, part of the reason is their aesthetic appeal, but the other half is because it is way more badass and requires way more balls/skill to spear, arrow, or tomahawk something than it takes to shoot it with a gun. As a result I have started to dabble in the creation of functional replicas of the tools and weapons that indigenous peoples used to hunt wild animals and each other. My first real attempts at this have been a hickory self-bow, a small tomahawk, and a spear. Recently I decided to make the spear more authentic. It is a Cold Steel Assegai blade mounted on an oak haft. To make it more 'traditional' looking I decided to strip the paint and apply my own patina.
The spearhead (above) came with a very modern, non-traditional black paint finish, which I would like to replace with a more traditional and natural looking forced vinegar patina. The first step in this process is to strip the paint from the spearhead with paint stripper and steel wool (below).
As you can see, the paint is removed, but what the picture does not show is that the metal feels somewhat rough and there are still minute flecks of paint still adhering to it. To solve this problem I sanded it with carbide sandpaper to achieve a more polished look (below).
This sanding treatment has made the spearhead quite smooth once again and has also made it quite shiny and new looking. To make it look more aged as well as to protect it from the elements and make it more discrete for potential hunting usage, I am applying a vinegar patina.
No comments:
Post a Comment