I've had this Ontario Ranger EOD Karambit forever...........buts its never been used, aside from ventilating tires and drums at the scrapyard (old work) The heat treat was bad....soft in some parts of the blade, very brittle in other spots, it was a bloody nightmare to even get dull sharp......a regrind by a pro knife guy resulted in a few tiny chunks of the blade cracking out near the scales. I ground in serrations at those points and that was about the only part of the blade that I or others could get sharp. So i tossed it into the junk drawer and forgot about it. $180 CDN mistake buy. I liked that knife, despite its thickness (i prefer thin karambits - more slicey ) it felt great in the hand. finally pulled it out today and stared at it for about 2 hours while reading some of George Matheis (Mercop) work . Picked up the non functional karambit and had an idea.......lop off the front of the blade , file the blade down, round everything off and turn it into a karambit impact tool. Remove all the coating, and soak it in acid to patina it, then brass black it and put the scales back on. started by heating it to cherry and letting it cool, to make filing and cutting easier (hand tools). Whatever Ontario used to coat these blades, it must have been industrial epoxy coatings.....the base layer did not burn off. Letting it cool here for a bit before i get into shaping it. so this is where I am at now........not looking forward to all the hand filing, but i have no grinder so...... this is a rough sketch of the metal i'll be removing. filing away........I love German tool steel Machinist files ongoing project.........will keep this thread updated.
lotsa hand filing, still need to strip off the rest of the coating, maybe sandblast, and then soak in acid.
burning off the rest of the coating (faster and cheaper than driving out to Langley BC to sandblast it)
heated it up hot and dropped it into a heavy salt brine solution, repeated this 4 times. Was trying to rapidly rust etch the blade, going for a post apocalyptic look decided to go a different route.......sanded the blank, then i heated up the blank HOT and dropped it into veg oil and then into the oven to blacken it came out pretty damn black after an hour in the oven at 450 deg and there you have it, a karambit impact tool. cut down the sheath, could probably do a better job, I might trim more down and flatten it out a bit. Still needs a teklok
