Cmp-3v?

Jd4003

Jd4003

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Apr 13, 2009
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I was thinking about having a custom camp knife made, and right now I'm leaning towards CMP-3V for the blade, and I was wondering, who you all think are the best makers when it comes to working with and heat treating this steel? Thanks! :D
 
Jd4003 said:
I was thinking about having a custom camp knife made, and right now I'm leaning towards CMP-3V for the blade, and I was wondering, who you all think are the best makers when it comes to working with and heat treating this steel? Thanks! :D
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You'll have a tough time finding somebody who "specializes" in 3V. But that stuff will make one amazing camp knife. 3V is a royal pain in the bung hole to work with from what I've heard. Good luck!
 
i love 3v but its a bit of a grinder belt abuser and you really dont want to forge the steel (CPM is about as good as it gets anyhow)

maybe you could talk to J at http://www.mountainhollow.net/ he let me use his camp/chopper pattern and its great (mine was full tang but he would make one hidden tang if you wanted )
if he wants to make it i ll HT it with cryo
 
Like many of the cpm steels, 3v takes it's own unique H/T to get the most out of it. I have built a few from it but Jerry Hossum probably works with more of the cpm steels than anyone that I know.

Gary
 
Eric Ochs makes some knives out of 3V. www.ochssherworx.com
good lookin knives, I'll be testing out a couple 3V options and some S30V as well.

3V=
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]Carbon[/FONT] [FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]0.80%[/FONT] [FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]Chromium[/FONT] [FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]7.50%[/FONT] [FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]Vanadium[/FONT] [FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]2.75%[/FONT] [FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]Molybdenum[/FONT] [FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]1.30%[/FONT]

It seems to be a favourite steel for competition cutting since it resists chipping but is still highly wear resistant. In comp cutting, I've read that the cutters absolutely push the boundaries of how thin the cutting edge can be in order to achieve efficiency. A lot of them use it so it must be pretty awesome.
 
It sounds like Bailey's out of the knife game for now,
I grabbed this comp cutter from him a couple years back.
Forged 3v, he said it barely moved under the press.

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Doug
 
Jerry Hossom does love 3V, and he makes a super fine camp knife occassionally (but mostly fighters.) He's also got a load of 3v blades in the works right now, but I'm not sure exactly what models, but perhaps he'll have something suitable at his table at the Atlanta bladeshow, if you care to wait and see...
 
CPM 3V is my favorite blade steel. Its toughness has to be experienced to be believed.

A friend made a camp knife from 3V. When he sharpened the blade it had a small wire edge. He used the knife to chop scrub oak. When he was finished chopping the wire edge was not affected.

Bailey Bradshaw used 3V for his Whitewing knives. When testing the steel he dropped a folder tip first into his concrete floor. The knife stuck in the floor, fell over, and chipped the floor. He repeated the test with the same result.

We've been using a 3V trout-bird knife from David Wesner on our packaging table for a few months. The finished blade is .040" at the spine with a 3" cutting edge. The handle is textured orange G10 with black G10 liners. When I opened the box I immediately thought we would bend the blade. David said it would work and he is correct. I'm pleasantly surprised how stiff the blade is. It has been used hard every day and is holding up great.

WesnerTroutBird3V-s.jpg
 
Might look into Fehrman knives. They put out some really great hard-use blades in 3V. If you can't get a custom maker to make one to your liking in a price range you like.
 
I have been test-driving some 3v myself lately, trying to decide if it is worthwhile to HT myself or if it needs a commercial setup. A lot of makers seem to lean towards the latter, many if not most of the 3v blades I have seen for sale lately have out-sourced commercial HT. The jury is still out on my results but if you want 3v and are concerned about the HT, you might look for a maker who is having it done by a known and respected outfit.
 
We use a lot of CPM steels, S30v and 3V in particular. We have used 3V for several years and are very impressed with its toughness and edge holding ability. We try to keep several 3V blades in the works for carrying to shows in addition to the custom orders. It is time consuming to work, but the results are worth the extra effort if you want a good using knife that you don't have to sharpen often.

We mostly do our own heat treatment and occasionally use Bos if we have too many for us to handle conveniently.In heat treating 3V, getting the hardness we wanted after the quench was a bit of a challenge at first. Like most things if you work at it, it can be done. We have just started using a heat treatment procedure that differs from Crucible's recommended procedure in that it includes a cryo treatment after quenching. It was recommended to us by a metallurgist that has done a lot of work with knife steels and so far it has worked out very well. Charlie is using the knife below this hunting season and is very impressed with the results he is getting.


391592216.jpg
 
do you and Charlie offer your heat treating services to other knife makers?
 
I've told this story before, but I think it needs repeating. 3V is one of my favorite steels, period. I was one of the first people to get 3V, having obtained some from a friend of mine LONG ago, when they would only sell super large quantities at a time. This friend bought about $10,000 worth, I think and let me try some. I sent some to Bailey Bradshaw, and he was so impressed with it, he used it for his Whitewing line of knives and many of his customs, too.

But, the story I want to tell, is my first experience making something from it. I ground out some crude looking Busse Steelheart looking test blade out of 3V stock that was between 3/16" and 1/4" thick. I drove over to Russ Andrew's shop in Kansas City, about 4 hours away, and he heat treated it for me. Now, this was before quench plates. Russ simply double wrapped the blade in the foil and set his old Evenheat oven to the recommended temp by Crucible. The blade got the proper soak time, at the proper temp(close to 2000 degrees, if I remember correctly). Then, it was quicky taken out of the oven, removed from the foil as quicky as possible and hung in the air to cool. No quench plates, no dry ice or liquid nitrogen, etc...

Crucible calls for tempering 3V at about 950 degrees for 2 hours at a time, 3 times. Well, as I had to drive home and get ready for work the next day, this blade only got 2 of the 2 hour temper cycles. No time for the 3rd cycle.

When I got home and attempted to do some finish grinding, I found that a new 50 grit ceramic belt was glazing over pretty quickly and really not taking much metal off. :eek: Finally, I was able to get the edge a good bit thinner, but was pretty unhappy at how uneven my grinding was, so I got pissed and threw the blade point first, HARD, down onto my concrete floor in the garage. A big chunk of concrete came out of the floor and the knife blade had a gray mark on the tip, but no damage. :eek: I took the blade outside and found some old 4x4s and did some chopping. With the edge being thinner than a normal axe, this blade sunk in quite deeply and I twisted it violently purposely, when I took the blade out. No damage, whatsoever. I remember thinking to myself, "Self, this is some pretty good stuff!". But, being really curious, I sent the blade to Bailey Bradshaw, who had a Rockwell tester. Bailey said the blade Rockwelled at 62-63! :eek:

The purpose of my telling this story is so folks can realize how good this stuff truly is. If I can get results like mine, without the ideal heat treat process, imagine what the properly heat treated 3V blade is capable of.

BTW, I never did finish that blade. Bailey did the 3rd temper cycle for me and it sits at Rockwell 60, right there on my workbench. Too damn ugly to let anybody see! ;)
 
I remember that chain of events Danbo.

I never found 3V difficult to heat treat. I would often heat treat 20 to 30 blades at a time and all of them would be within one point of each other, 62-63rc . I tempered at 925 and ended up with 60rc. 3V is so tough, the hardness can be on the high side with no worry about broken tips.

Warren Osborne did extensive testing of several steels when he started competeing ( or should I say winning) in cutting competitions. He found 3V to be a little inferior to CPM M4. Through his tests, he found the steel substrate that holds and supports the carbide particles (key to edge holding) to be soft. That's probably why Harry's inclusion of cryo treatment improves the end result. The soft steel substrate is the key to 3v's toughness. When I say it's soft, that is obviously a relative term.

I will say that if you don't care if the knife has a high finish, CPM M4 is mind blowing stuff. Warren's cutters had very thin edges and never failed as far as I know.
 
I've not ground any heat treated CPM M4 yet. But, when Gayle Bradley sends me a knife he made out of CPM M4 and it has mill scale finish on the flats and "maybe" a 400 grit belt finish on the blade bevels, when his normal blade finishes are something like a handrubbed 1500 grit, it tells me it's NO fun to work with.
 
Lorien we don't like to heat treat other makers knives. There would be a since of obligation to the maker and to the knife that we would not want to accept not having control over the completion of the knife. Another reason we don't is that we mostly heat treat our blades prior to grinding. Most makers we talk with don't want to do that because of the added difficulty, but we have no problems with warping of any kind now and it is worth it to us to eliminate that problem.

When we first started heat treating 3V we didn't like the hardness we were getting after quenching. We would always end up a point or two below where we wanted the steel after tempering. We were using the same quench plates we used on the S30V without any problems which are 2"X6"x18" and made of aluminum. They just weren't getting the steel cool quick enough. We started freezing the quench plates and the problem was solved. We can quench multiple knives without over heating the plates and hit the numbers we are looking for on the Rockwell C scale. The first time we put the blade at 1950 degrees between two frost covered aluminum plates was a little exciting in that we had not heard of anyone doing this and had no idea what was going to happen. Those things will take the heat out of a piece of steel so fast you can hear it squeak.
 
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