My favorite color is BLUE!.............A patina thread.

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Pass around MH looking good

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Want to try if slicing some of the mangoes I just bought will make these more colorful.
Pre-mangoes:
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it could just be me. I have yet to find a carbon knife that doesn't react to mangoes. it leaves a bit of black residue on my mangoes every time. I tried a bunch of mangos over the weekend again. instead of making the patina look better, i think it actually removed some patina. I used yellow mangoes.
 
it could just be me. I have yet to find a carbon knife that doesn't react to mangoes. it leaves a bit of black residue on my mangoes every time. I tried a bunch of mangos over the weekend again. instead of making the patina look better, i think it actually removed some patina. I used yellow mangoes.
I tried this yesterday with a fully reactive, new and not-yet-patinaed w2 / iron clad knife - no residue at all. I only cut one at a time - perhaps if I cut up several without wiping the blade it would react? Or is it that the patina on your knife reacted with the mango?
 
it could just be me. I have yet to find a carbon knife that doesn't react to mangoes. it leaves a bit of black residue on my mangoes every time. I tried a bunch of mangos over the weekend again. instead of making the patina look better, i think it actually removed some patina. I used yellow mangoes.
This is so wild to me. It's not that I don't believe you, I've just never had that experience myself and cut mangoes at least once a week for salsa. Gotta be a varietal thing. 🤔
 
it could just be me. I have yet to find a carbon knife that doesn't react to mangoes. it leaves a bit of black residue on my mangoes every time. I tried a bunch of mangos over the weekend again. instead of making the patina look better, i think it actually removed some patina. I used yellow mangoes.
I find monosteel knives gives prettier colors with mangoes than iron cladded knives. Iron clads turns grey quicker, monosteel gives more vivid colors.

This is an old picture of the best mango patina I had. The colors are even more vivid in person.

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I find monosteel knives gives prettier colors with mangoes than iron cladded knives.

This is an old picture of the best mango patina I had. The colors are even more vivid in person.

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Wow. That’s some beautiful patina. Based on the comments and this pic, maybe I should try it on my Shihan first. May I know what steel this is?
 
These are the mangoes I have. I just call yellow mangoes. No idea what variety, but they taste good! My kids love mangoes, so we go through at this this much every week during mango season

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Two monos - HSC is AU mono and Kipp is 52100 mono. You have to wait a minute for the black residue to show up. The HSC is less reactive but you can still see a bit black stuff. I definitely agree thicker patina would help, there is always a little bit for me…and it bothers me…

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To explain how I got the vivid patina, most of the pretty colors are from peeling the mangoes with the blade itself. Little of the patina is actually from cutting them.
 
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you can see the “black juice” on the knife too after a minute. I normally cut 6-8 mangoes and I don’t wipe the blade off in between.

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Ya I really don't have a clue. Maybe that variety is a little more acidic than others? Also, and more importantly, whenever I'm breaking in freshly thinned/polished/cleaned carbon, I wipe that thing down *constantly.* Going through 8 mangos on a knife without a patina, and not wiping it down as you go, is definitely gonna get messy. Idk.

My Misono's patina is pretty much indestructible at this point, but I still wipe it off often when I'm like, peeling and chopping pineapple.
 
Ya I really don't have a clue. Maybe that variety is a little more acidic than others? Also, and more importantly, whenever I'm breaking in freshly thinned/polished/cleaned carbon, I wipe that thing down *constantly.* Going through 8 mangos on a knife without a patina, and not wiping it down as you go, is definitely gonna get messy. Idk.

My Misono's patina is pretty much indestructible at this point, but I still wipe it off often when I'm like, peeling and chopping pineapple.
I believe you. I think it needs to be super thick to be able to handle the mangoes I have. You can’t see the patina too well in the picture, but I would say the Kipp has a healthy amount. I only did four test cuts using two mangoes for these pictures.
 
I believe you. I think it needs to be super thick to be able to handle the mangoes I have. You can’t see the patina too well in the picture, but I would say the Kipp has a healthy amount. I only did four test cuts using two mangoes for these pictures.
I'd do a bootleg etch on one of them and then test.
 
This disaster is my OKC Game and Fish knife, OKC's version the Horace Kephart bushcraft knife. It costs $32 bucks. It is made of 1075 steel with and HRC of about 55. It has a paper slicing edge on it but I am not used to a quality whetstone on such relatively soft steel, I'll address that later. What you see on the blade is the result of cutting up 1 Kosher pickle. I have a lot of carbon steel knives but none of those have this happen when I cut up the same brand of Kosher pickles. I don't consider this "patina". I didn't even have time to oil the blade before I re-sheathed it. Once I get it cleaned up it is going into the knife case. The iPhone camera makes it look worse than looking at with my own eyes 😟

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This disaster is my OKC Game and Fish knife, OKC's version the Horace Kephart bushcraft knife. It costs $32 bucks. It is made of 1075 steel with and HRC of about 55. It has a paper slicing edge on it but I am not used to a quality whetstone on such relatively soft steel, I'll address that later. What you see on the blade is the result of cutting up 1 Kosher pickle. I have a lot of carbon steel knives but none of those have this happen when I cut up the same brand of Kosher pickles. I don't consider this "patina". I didn't even have time to oil the blade before I re-sheathed it. Once I get it cleaned up it is going into the knife case. The iPhone camera makes it look worse than looking at with my own eyes 😟

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I don't feel so bad now I pulled out a 40 year old Old Chicago 5"Chefs Knife. Its whole blade looks like the brownish area on the Game and Fish knife. I never paid any attention to it as long as the knife did its job.
 
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