Gary,

Interesting question.

I am currently making a knife with poured pewter bolsters to fit into the early 19th century period. I have not contemplated antiquing it at all figuring it would oxidize on its own. I do have this suggestion: Take a piece of ingot (just a wafer size) and polish the edge and apply different treatments and see how it looks and holds up carrying in your pocket for a few days.

I am using a proofing and fixturing alloy as my material. It melts at a very low temperature. In the reading material they claim to have some of their products in a narrow range of color. Besides, the silver, they have it in gold color. It seems you could mix it to get differing tones. I have not looked into the color choices but cant imaging there to be many.

This stuff is soft and I would expect a using knife to mar pretty easily, especially on rear bolsters, as we might see in antiques or frontier styles. If you are pouring pins, it might tend to stay cleaner and be easier to brighten back up. While not appropriate for most applications, this technique is interesting and has its place in my tool box.

Thanks, Lin. I'm not only pouring the pins but am using the same no-lead pewter for front & rear handle spacers. Each spacer will be between the wooden handle & some W/I fittings that I have etched to give them a matt finish. I would imagine that the pewter will eventually darken but wanted to help that along so I wouldn't have shiny next to dull.

I'm going to do some experimenting with the pewter. Let me know if you come across anything that works well for aging it.

Gary

After some initial testing I'm thinking that I will be able to soak the entire handle in ferric to age it. It has a fairly quick darkening effect on the pewter. I'm not sure about the long term effects of ferric on the wood but it doesn't show a great deal of effect initially. With proper neutralizing I'm hoping that I should be able to get an viable aged effect with the handle.

Gary