Big Camp Chopper

Simply put; that knife rocks! Looks like it would chop all day long without missing a beat.
 
Greg, you out did yourself on this one! It turned out even BETTER than I had hoped! Can't wait to get my hands on it! :):D
 
Greg,
That's very nicely done. I think the long plunge cut so close
to the end and the guard go together really well.
Nice pistol too.

Nick,
Thanks for posting the heat treating info; interesting results and thoughts.
Regards,
Greg
 
is this a full tang? How did you get the guard on?
 
Greg, it's a beautiful big knife! Also, with the term,"big camp knife" pertaining to your knife, it could do the camp work for a BIG camp, too. I have no doubt it could! Very nice work, fella.
 
Greg, you hit the sweet spot in that knife!!!

Nick I think you right and your experiments seem to dovetail nicely with my thoughts on the matter. The triple quench method was developed and tested by Ed Fowler who uses an O/A torch to austenitize his blades prior to quenching, a method that results in even less soak time than using a forge. To my knowledge (Ed Fowler) has always said that this was a method for heat treating 5160 and 52100 only, both steels with a significant amount of chromium content. It's a method, backed by testing, that appears to optimize the performance of these two steels when using a torch or forge for austenitizing and your eye to judge the temperatures.

In my mind it's something akin to edge packing, everyone thinks the edge packing is what is beneficial when what is really happening is the blade is going through several thermal cycles during the “edge packing” process which is what results in finer grain structure. You can do away with the edge packing and just do the thermal cycling and achieve the same results. Similarly, if you use a heat source that provides a proper soak at austenitizing temperatures then you should be able to do away with the triple quenches, and your experiments seem to support that Nick.

I have made two blades from 5160 and used the trple normalization/triple quench/triple temper on them and they both performed wonderfully. Two blades is hardly a good sampling for anything however. I don’t use 5160 much so I haven’t tried a single quench method using just my forge to austenitize. I can only imagine though that we are talking about though is levels of performance that most users would probably never notice unless you sit down and start slicing away at a massive pile of rope.

All rambling on my part however and probably worth about as much as the space I used to write it! :p

Oh, and what Nick said, that knife rocks!!!
 
I accidently posted on wrong topic...nevermind, move on,,,,move on,,,nothing to see here,,,read the next post..LOL
 
Very very,... very nice, I like the simple clean lines of that blade, Can't see the handle too well in the photo, but judging by the blade it is also well done.
Nice work
Jerry
 
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