100+ "heat treatments" ???

[Thomas Linton]

Looking for information on puukko makers from decades ago, I ran across a current maker who makes this claim:

The XXXXXX PUUKKO® knife smiths start making world famous xxxxx™ puukkos - the original Finnish Knives - by heating round silver steel in a charcoal fire. Then the knife smiths hand hammer the knife blades thousands of strikes. Next is quenching in oil and Progression Tempering© the puukko knife edge to the optimal hardness of steel. These stages give the xxxxxx knife blades their unsurpassed, long lasting razor sharpness. During each heat treatment the knife blade gets better edge holding properties - the more heat treating, the better the knife blade. Xxxxxx knives have over a hundred heat treatments at least [emphasis added]

This sounds somewhat unreal. Yes? No?

Not that they make "the original Finnish" knives in any case.

 

[tinkerer]

On their claim, I don't know.

I did read on here that the original wootz was the result of literally a hundred heat treatments that progreeively changed to all carbides to a mosiac on the surface.

Your guess is a good as mine.

Larry
Tinkerer

 

[hardheart]

original wootz was a slow cooled bloom, but a lot of thermal cycling can also cause carbide banding. 100 would be too much, repeated heating and cooling can reduce grain size, whihc increases toughness, but reducing grain size also reduces hardenability.

 

[Frederick89]

Just a bit of marketing. In the finnish version of the website you won't find any claim of +100 heat treatments.

Silversteel and wootz are two completely different things and the silversteel used by finnish makers in nothing other than Böhler K510.
K510 is actually a great steel that gets an extremely fine grain, holds edge for very long time and, despite it's high C content, is also capable of a quite good resilience.


The only "original" Tommi puukkos were made by Kalle Keränen and his son Setti, from 1870s to 1940s, starting from the way older regional puukko of the Kainuu municipality.
All the other makers have made knives following his style, adding sometimes some personal touch.

It's true that no other finnish puukko has a clear and defined history like the Tommi, that litterary helped to create later finnish history, but that's the main reason of its fame.