A crack in the blade

S

Sochin

Joined
Apr 9, 1999
Messages
345
Morning gents,

I'm usually over in practical / tactical but I recently picked up a large bowie knife, very deep and heavy, that seems to have been fground out of huge file.

Even tho it had a crack in it, I wanted it for training, handling purposes.

But I got to considering, maybe the crack could be fixed? It is about where the false top edge ends and it goes from the spine to about half way down toward the edge.

Is it feasible to fix this?
 
Sochin said:
Morning gents,

I'm usually over in practical / tactical but I recently picked up a large bowie knife, very deep and heavy, that seems to have been fground out of huge file.

Even tho it had a crack in it, I wanted it for training, handling purposes.

But I got to considering, maybe the crack could be fixed? It is about where the false top edge ends and it goes from the spine to about half way down toward the edge.

Is it feasible to fix this?
Click to expand...
Not really!! If it is small try grinding it out.
 
You could try filling it in with low temp solder, keeping the edge wrapped in a cool wet cloth to protect the temper, and sand it down afterwards to clean it up. It'll never be as good as new unless it was forgewelded and HTed, or like IG said you could reprofile the tip area, but it wouldn't even be the same knife after either of those.
 
Im just curious if anyone thinks it would be feasible but....what if you ground into the crack a little on both sides of the blade, then placed the sharpened edge in a tray of ice water and MIG welded up both sides with lower heat enough to fill in where it was ground out...then grind smooth? Think the edge would still get hot enough to mess up the temper? I was just thinking how some people place the hardened edge into water and then take an A/O torch to the spine to give it a spring temper. I have no idea if that would work, just thinking out loud...:foot::rolleyes::D

Ryan
 
Soft solder would do nothing to help the crack or strengthen the blade,and most likely would not flow through it.Grind it out or shorten the blade.Don't let the blade get hot while grinding.
Stacy
 
Well, I don't have anything to cut / chop with it anyway, except beer cans full of water and hanging paper. For training purposes it's fine. Would the solder disguise / hide the crack at least?
 
Well, I don't have anything to cut / chop with it anyway, except beer cans full of water and hanging paper. For training purposes it's fine.
Click to expand...

Sochin-
Personally, I would strongly advise against using this blade for anything that involves swinging. As I'm sure Mete and others here can tell you, a crack like that can make the blade snap easily and unpredictably. I myself tried using a big knife that was cracked, and it broke like glass when I hit something very lightly. To me, it's just too big of a risk that ya might get seriously injured when that hunk of sharpened steel goes flying.

I'd take the advice offered and make it into a short blade.
If you insist on using it anyway, then at least wrap some duct tape around it or something, so that the tip won't go airborne when it does break.
 
Any attempt to solder a hardened blade would not work,and would de-temper the blade.
 
It would almost surely de-temper the edge.That is the least problem of welding the crack.It would create stress areas around the weld that would make the blade break on the first whack.Sochin didn't say what the metal was,but it wouldn't matter.The only solution is to remove the damaged area.Break off the blade at the crack and re-grind the tip.It could be left as a big Wharncliff style chopper.If I had made this blade ,I would have broken it upon inspection,and discarded the carcass.It is never acceptable to finish a sub quality knife.Such a knife could be quite dangerous to use,especially for chopping.
 
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