Crystalline structure tighter?

[pig]

Hi blade makers,

my hobby is knife making and I forge my blades---but:

There are two opinions.

(1)The classical one is that reduction of thickness (50-80%) by forging is good to fracture the crystalline structure tighter, making much better blade.

(2)A new argument is that current new steels are so good (content and handling in factory) that forging do not help essentially as it did in the past.

Have anybody anything concrete about that, not just belief or wish?
Have you seen any published reports of metallurgy?
Have you experimented by yourself?

It would be easy to work the same steel two ways (into same dimensions) and heat threat both similarly and compare blades at work.
Anybody done already?

Good blades! Tuomo

 

[Rick Baum]

Last night I read a story in Ed Fowler's book about him and Wayne Goddard taking a piece of 5160 and making 4 knives. 2 of the knives were stock removal and two were forged. 1 of the stock removal knives and 1 of the forged knives were each triple quenched, and the other 2 knives were single quenched. After the knives were finished, Ed and Wayne would take turns cutting rope with each of the knives. The person cutting did not know which knife they were using (tried to keep the test as impartial as possible). After all was said and done, the single quenched stock removal knife cut the least followed by the triple quenched stock removal knife. Then the single quenched forged blade followed by the triple quenched forged blade. I can't remember the actual number of cuts for each blade, but the difference between the stock removal knives to the triple quenched forged blade was very dramatic. It was something like 160 total cuts to over 550 cuts. I'd be willing to bet that Ed's knives made from 52100 will cut with the best of the new steels, not to mention they are extremely tough, whereas some of the new steels might cut well but will break if too much lateral torque is applied to the blade. IMHO, if you want all around high performance (cut and tough), forging is where it's at. Maybe Ed will chime in to better explain his experiences.

Rick

RIck