2nd Amendment from M2

JTknives

JTknives

Joined
Jun 11, 2006
Messages
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I have a bunch of Power hacksaw blades, the good kind, all hard not bymetal. so i have drawn up some 2nd Amendment knives in auto cad so that i can use the Wire EDM at work to cut out the profile. so i bead blasted off all the paint from the power hacksaw blade and did a quick RC hardness check as i was wondering wht it was. Holy $#!+ it is 64.5-65 RC and the funny thing is that the blade has a lot of flex to it and does not feal like its going to snap. i know i know the edge might be the onley thing thats hard, thats why i tested it all over and it was all 64-65 RC except on the ends where the bolt holes are. my question is this. should i just make a knife from it and say its a tester and see how well it holds up. Also i just made an educated guess that its M2 as it is a HSS. What do you think. would make one heck of a slicer with say a 5 degree edge bevel ;)
 
If they're HSS edge to back, and flex that well, they've most likely
been austempered. Austempering creates Bainite, not martinsite, so
edge wear properties may be a bit less....

Added:...Yup, a test piece would be a good idea.
 
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Mine seem to keep an edge fairly well! :D I've made 3 so far and once you get your edge angle correct they stay sharp. I used Starret Red Stripe full hard power hacksaw blades
 
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i say make a tester and beat the snot out of it...really try to break it. but before you do that do some controlled test cutting next to one of your other knives. it doesn't have to be exact, just so you can tell the difference.

sounds like it could be some really awesome stuff there.
 
Flex is a factor of thickness and shape not alloy or structure. All pieces of flat steels of the same width and thickness flex the same amount no matter the alloy or the hardness. what is different is the the elastic limit. When that steel reaches its elastic limit it will fail, either by breaking or bending permanently. Soft steel will bend when its limit is reached. hardened steel will break, a spring will break or bend it, just has a better elastic limit. This is straight from the Fundamentals of Metallurgy text. I have some power hacksaw blades and we make them into scrapers for work all the time. You can flex them quite a bit, over their length, but, when the do reach their limit it is snap. Trust me I have broken quite a few both as scrapers and as saw blades. You can get them pretty hot with out making them any softer and they will eat your belts. They do stay sharp once there. I do believe they are most likely M2. I have seen them smoking and sawing away, they almost never dull.
 
I made a couple of kitchen knives from all HSS Sawzall blades several years ago. They do eat up the belts, but, for recycled steel, they sure do stay sharp. I don't know the hardness on mine, but I can't seem to sharpen them on conventional stones. Diamonds do the trick, though, and that's what I normally use anyway. I ground them pretty thin, and they don't seem to chip out at the edge any more than the blades I've made from 1095.

Todd
 
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