Tried my hand on a forced patina on a couple of my Mora knives.

Went with a Cider Vinegar base, then a Mustard Stripe pattern.

Still need to keep them oiled, but not as much as before.





Came out not terrible, if I do say so myself...

Those look good! I haven’t seen that process before.

Pretty sweet treatment.

Also worked on a knife sheath today.






Then added a nice antique mahogany stain:






It was a good day...

Really nice finish in the knife. Can you describe the high points of the process?

Nice work.

Here's what I did:

Clean the blade with grease/oil remover.

Wrap blades in paper towels. Soak in cider vinegar and let set for at least an hour. The longer they soak, the darker they will get. I wanted a light grey base, so I did mine for about 90 minutes.

Remove the paper towels and wash the vinegar off with dish soap immediately. I made the mistake of leaving them unrinsed for a half hour and they started actually rusting. A bit of Windex helps neutralize the vinegar as well.

Once cleaned off, apply yellow mustard in the design you desire and let set a minimum of 5 hours.

Clean/scrape/wash mustard off to reveal your pattern (hopefully), then coat in light oil.

That's mighty interesting. I sure appreciate you posting it up. Gonna have to give it a try. Thanks!

It is my belief that everyone should have a knife like this. Wood handle, leather sheath, can do 99% of tasks in the woods. Great job. I have 3 like this that are hand made.

Got tired of my dump trailer battery dying and decided to investigate. I know my truck charges my camper so I was relatively certain that my truck was OK.

I tested for continuity from the battery to the trailer plug and it was showing OK, so I moved to investigate the truck thinking that was the issue. My truck is a 2018 F350 and thinks it is super smart. It only turns on the charge relay if a trailer is connected and you hit the brakes so it makes it tough to test without building a test harness. I checked and checked and finally dawned on me that I have 2 7way receptacles- one in the bed found the camper and one at the bumper. I checked for voltage at the bed and got 14.3. Wtf?? Why isn't it charging then?!?

I decided to tear apart the plug itself on the trailer and quickly found the issue...the 12v wire was corroded completely off.

I cleaned it up some and stuck a new terminal on it and now get 14.3 on the trailer battery too.

Woohoo! That initial continuity test threw me off. It must have had just enough of a connection to show continuity still but not enough to charge.

I will replace the whole thing here soon because the corrosion isn't going to stop. I need to find a waterproof one...this happened once before many years ago too.

That should keep it topped off!

I replaced the cord on my dump trailer with something similar to this:


https://www.etrailer.com/Wiring/etrailer/e99011.html?feed=npn&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-q_QuOm-6AIVlNdkCh1wCwNpEAQYASABEgLLDfD_BwE

The plus is molded to the cord. All the connections are in the box, which I put in the tool box that holds the pump and battery


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Ewwwww. That’s a nasty looking connection.

I'm fully convinced that the trailer wiring connection industry is a racket set up by The Five Families. There's no way in 2020 it is still this pathetic for any other reason.

I was looking at those. The problem with just replacing the male plug is that they aren't waterproof and it will just keep happening. One of these times it will be the brake wire that it happens to and that could be ugly....

The molded cords would make more sense. I have to see if I can find room in the box, not sure it would work.

Is the junction box waterproof? Ideally I would just mount it inside the steel channel behind the jack so I can keep my box space.

They say "Weatherproof". Not totally waterproof but keeps most of the water out and lets anything that gets in drain out. There are two of them on my boom truck and they work. Both are mounted to the frame