Alright guys, welcome back to the shop. In today's video, we're going to be doing a brief tutorial on how I acid stone wash my knives. Now I did a video on this a while ago, but some of my processes have changed and I would like to do an update video just so you can see some of the things that I've learned when acid stone washing a knife. Before we start the stone washing process, I like to put my makers mark into the side of the blade with the electrochemical etching machine. To do this, I generally just use DC power on the etching machine so that I get a nice deep edge. If we weren't going to be stone washing, I would then hit it with the AC power to make it a little bit darker. The first step of the stone washing process is cleaning the knife and this is extremely important. This is one step that I have prioritized recently and it has paid dividends in the final outcome. So wash your knife with soap and water and a brush, make sure there are no contaminants on your blade. Once you have a clean knife, go ahead and put it into your acid solution. I like to use ferric chloride mixed 50-50 with the stilt water. I've had this solution for about two years now and as the years go on, it gets a little bit weaker and takes a little bit longer to complete your etch, so keep that in mind. After the first two minutes of etching, I generally take the blade out and hit it with a piece of steel wool just to make sure that I'm getting a nice clean etch. Sometimes if there is a contaminant left on the blade, you'll have a spot that isn't etching completely and by knocking off all of the residue with the steel wool and putting it back in the acid, you'll make sure to get that point leveled out. I repeat this removal and steel wooling process every two to three minutes when etching the blade. If you want to leave the blade in there for the entire stretch without doing the steel wooling process and you had any contaminates on the blade that you didn't catch, you would get an uneven etch and some spots that may not have etched at all. Also notice when I put the blade into the acid, I give it a little bit of a swirl. I don't know if this is actually doing any good or not, but at this point it is a habit. With the acid that I'm using, which is around two years old, I generally shoot for around nine to twelve minutes of total etching time in order to get my desired darkness. After using a new acid solution, this time could be greatly reduced to around seven to nine minutes. The bottom line is the etch or knife in this solution for as long as it takes and intervals until you get your desired darkness. Once you have achieved your desired darkness, the last step in the etching process is to neutralize your blade so that the acid doesn't keep eating on your knife steel. I did this using two methods. The first is to spray it down with some windex, which has ammonia in it and is said to neutralize the acid. The second option is to throw some baking soda on there and I generally do both of these together just to make sure that my blade is fully neutralized. After the etching process is complete, I will spray the blade down with a little bit of WD40 or something similar to WD40, not because I think it will change the aesthetics of the next part of the process, but because I am always paranoid and I like having an oiled high carbon blade. I have an older video that goes over my full build of this stone tumbler, but if you don't have a fancy stone tumbler, don't worry because you can get the same finish just using a bucket of rocks and a little bit of manpower. I get asked about what type of rocks I use in this tumbler all the time and to be honest, these rocks just came from a home and garden store. They're not special rocks and just fine with what you have around you and use that to see how the finish looks. I'm sure different rocks can give you a different finish. I've heard some people will use ceramic media from Harbor Freight and get really good results with that stuff too. This stone tumbler flexes my 2x72 belt grinder and I turn the VFD setting pretty much all the way down as slow as it can go. However, there are plenty of different methods here that I have seen people rake up in their shops. I've seen people use their lathe or use a cordless drill, set up to a container so that I can rotate. At the end of the day, you can just shake your container for 10 to 15 minutes and get the same results. I've had good results running my rig for around 10 to 12 minutes. After we have run it through the stone tumbler, I take it out and clean it off with some WD-40 so that we can see what our final stone wash finish looks like. Without further ado, this is how it turned out. Now, I am obviously a huge fan of the stone wash finish. I think that it wears very well on a hard-view knife. However, I would caution you into getting into one camp versus the other. All of the finishes that people put on their knives have benefits and drawbacks so just keep that in mind when you are looking to get into the knife making game to try it all out and see what you like the most. So I hope you guys really enjoyed and maybe got something out of this video if you did hit that like button down below, comment on the video and consider subscribing to the channel. Until the next time, I'll catch you all on the flip side.