Post 8: Shaping and Etching the Salad Fork

   I made the mistake to drill the holes before cutting the small fork out of billet, and it ended up imperfect, so I decided to use it to figure out whether I wanted to keep the pieces pretty flat with square edges the full thickness of the billet, or whether they would look better if they were slightly rounded with rounded edges.
    Also, there is the issue of the shape of the forks. For a reason I have not yet figured out, most forks have a double curve:

      I would actually like my Damask Silverware to have all the handles laying flat on the table and curving the same way. So I heated the head of the fork red and simply curved the teeth up, leaving out the other opposite counter curve. It is perfectly functional.

    I sanded the fork until the handle had a nice smooth curve, and the teeth were rounded on the bottom side.

      Just two 15mn dips in the etchant produced the same beautiful matte grey finish, which I actually may prefer to the traditional Damask finish. 

      The question is: how it would hold up? Maintenance may require a periodic 15 mn rejuvanating dip in the Ferric Chloride. Something to think about... 

       Another thing is that Damask Steel rusts, and should be kept oiled between uses. How is that going to change the finish? Easy enough to find out. I rubbed some olive oil on and wiped it dry. There is surprisingly NO CHANGE to the matte finish.

Post 7: Etching the Knife

       First, as a test, I gave a high polish to one side of the knife, leaving the blade with a medium polish and the handle with the original finish of the billet on the other side.

       I then tried etching the knife in Ferric Chloride, and the pattern appeared after just a few minutes. After 15 minutes or so, it looked pretty good, but very shallow:

      So I put it back in. After about an hour, it actually looked worse, and still not deeply etched, and I was dissappointed that the pattern actually looked fuzzy.
     Some research and a couple of YouTube videos later, I had a solution: take the knife out every 10 to 15 minutes and clean it with very fine steel wool to remove the oxyde, so the etchant has a fresh surface to act on. That worked well, and after 5x 15mn  dips, even though there was still not much depth, the knife looked a beautiful matte grey with a subtle pattern.

Post 6: Test Spoon

   I didn't want to waste any of my precious Damascus Billet, so I cut out a dessert spoon out of regular steel, and used a traditional forging technique to shape it. I don't have a forge, but my OxyAcetylene Torch did a good job of quickly heating the oval head of the spoon cherry red.
I then placed it on a piece of 2x4, and pounded it with a Ball Peen Hammer as it was burning a hole in the wood. Basic and smoky, but it worked allright for proof of concept.

    The repeated heating caused the spoon to turn black, and I like the rough hammered look. That could be a cheap way to make a set, just using regular steel.
    The problem is going to keep the size and depth of the sppons consistant, so I searched the Internet, and found a cast iron spoon stake at the Blacksmith Depot: