- Joined
- Jul 8, 2001
- Messages
- 3,623
I test all my blades after heat treating on the brass rod and their cutting ability and occasionally chop a 2x4 into to make sure my heat treating is where I want it to be. But when I get a new order of steel in I take a piece of it and forge it into a totally destruction blade, to make sure my heat treating does or doesn't need a little tweaking one way or the other with the new batch.
Here's a blade I forged from a piece of new 1" - 52100 round stock I received.
The blade is primitive looking, but flat ground exactly the same as all my blades. The length of the blade from the plunge to the tip is only 6 1/2" and the spine thickness at the plunge is a shy 3/16" with a full distal taper.
1st.
picture is the rope cut, I made 100 cuts using just the area where the upsweep starts on the blade on the strand showing to the right under the blade, its approx. 5/8" thick. After 100 cuts my thumb was starting to get a bit sore but the blade was still cutting beautifully so I decided to go right to the chopping test, no touch up, just right to chopping.
2nd picture shows the blade and 2x4 after chopping it into twice, again I tried to use just the area where the upsweep area starts on the blade.
3rd picture shows the blade after I ran the area of the blade I did the chopping with across my arm, those little curved things are arm hair. Again the cutting edge has not been touched since the intial shapening before the tests began.
4th, picture shows the blade after it did a 90+ degree bend, it returned beautifully after relaxing it, if it had been a 10" blade like the ABS requires I don't think it would have shown much bend at all after relaxing, but I'll make a longer one and see if thats so on the next test blade I make.
5th picture is the blade after the bend, no cracks or breaks anywhere.
Thanks for lookin,
Bill
Here's a blade I forged from a piece of new 1" - 52100 round stock I received.
The blade is primitive looking, but flat ground exactly the same as all my blades. The length of the blade from the plunge to the tip is only 6 1/2" and the spine thickness at the plunge is a shy 3/16" with a full distal taper.
1st.
picture is the rope cut, I made 100 cuts using just the area where the upsweep starts on the blade on the strand showing to the right under the blade, its approx. 5/8" thick. After 100 cuts my thumb was starting to get a bit sore but the blade was still cutting beautifully so I decided to go right to the chopping test, no touch up, just right to chopping.
2nd picture shows the blade and 2x4 after chopping it into twice, again I tried to use just the area where the upsweep area starts on the blade.
3rd picture shows the blade after I ran the area of the blade I did the chopping with across my arm, those little curved things are arm hair. Again the cutting edge has not been touched since the intial shapening before the tests began.
4th, picture shows the blade after it did a 90+ degree bend, it returned beautifully after relaxing it, if it had been a 10" blade like the ABS requires I don't think it would have shown much bend at all after relaxing, but I'll make a longer one and see if thats so on the next test blade I make.
5th picture is the blade after the bend, no cracks or breaks anywhere.
Thanks for lookin,
Bill
