3' saw blade, GOOD starting material?

S

smwtnbndr

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Feb 21, 2016
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New to the forum and was looking for some input. I have a 3' diameter saw blade from my grandpa. It came out of an old saw mill in the 50's. I was wanting to make a knife out of it. He cut it in half in the 70's and made a couple knives for relatives. My question is to the usefulness of the blade for making knives. When I touch the blade in all areas I get what I looked on the internet and has characteristics of a tungsten spark. Straight line with fire? at the end of burning out.
Any thoughts would be much appreciated and forgive me if some of my lingo is off.
Thank you
 
Hey, welcome to the forum.

I'm not an expert on spark testing, so I'll let you figure that out.

Wanted to comment on the use of recycled steels in general. If you're just looking to have fun, then I'd say go for it. The steel will definitely have enough carbon to get hard... and that's all you really "need" in a blade steel.

However, if you're looking to sell them or make something really top notch, I'd stick with a steel that you can identify. The reason is, heat treat is REALLY important. It is probably the #1 factor in the performance of a knife. When using a mystery steel (like the saw blade) you're going to do your "best guess" at heat treating based on color or magnetism, and then do your "best guess" at tempering temperatures and such. If you buy a known identity steel and use that, you can heat treat to exact manufacturers specs, and therefore get a much more predicable and reproduce-able quality heat treat.

The heat treat impacts everything from edge holding, grain size, durability, corrosion resistance, and more.
 
Agree with DF. I think there's a good chance that you could make a very nice knife using the "just hotter than non-magnetic" and canola oil route, followed by a 400° oven. That shouldn't make a bad knife with the most likely alloys in mind. But making it more technical than that would be a fool's errand when you're guessing at the alloy.

Apparently scrap yards often have hand held alloy testers these days. One might be happy to test yours if you bring a sample in.
 
It should be a good carbon L1 type material. If the whole blade is already hardened I would have someone waterjet cut out your blanks. I did some like that and kept them cool when grinding and they turned out great.
 
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