drawbacks of a ground blade compared to a forged blade...

That is an ongoing argument. It has been discussed many times...with no real agreement.


To some folks, a stock removal guy who shapes a raw bar of steel, and the handles, and the rest of the knife is a bladesmith by the technical definition....but to others, the practical definition is that a bladesmith forges ( smiths) knives and a knifemaker makes knives.

I don't think this will ever be resolved, and the best thing to do is just make knives the way you like to...and call yourself whatever you want to. There is no Bladesmith Police that can tell you what to do.
 
Hmmm... maybe I'll call myself a cold blade maker, since I don't do anything with heat. :)

Yes, I know, that makes me the lowest form of knifemaker. So what's new? :D
 
james terrio said:
Just as some people only buy tool-steel and stainless blades because of very real performance advantages. I will leave questions of labor, skill and especially "art" to others. We're flogging a long-dead horse, here, gentlemen. This is the sort of thing that can only serve to ruffle feathers and get people riled-up and banned.
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Who says you cant forge tool and stainless steels?? Many folks have, some still do. Ive used and experimented with lots of steels, including some of the modern high performance CPM stuff, still keep coming back to W2 for a few reasons... one of which is performance. I think this is a very good discussion, one that should be brought up time to time... there is no harm in exploring the topic.

What I always come back to is this, if given a piece of lets say... 10" x 1.5" x 5/16" steel of your choice, you only use stock removal, and I forge mine.... well im gonna outcut you at least 9 out of 10 times. If anyone doubts this, we can try it out.
 
RMLamey said:
that the customers appreciate the extra labor, art, and skill set it takes to properly forge a blade.
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Couldn't agree more with this Matt.

I don't see that as argumentative, condescending, elitist... whatever someone offended by it wants to call it. Learning to forge is a whole new skill set.

What I have REALLY never understood about these arguments, is that just about everyone I've ever met that gets to try forging--- really likes it.
 
I appreciate forged work myself, and enjoy doing it when I do forge something. It does have structural benefits for some items and it offers the ability to change dimensions of a piece rather than just reduce them, which opens up worlds of capabilities when it comes to making more complex items. It also tends to result in organic, 3-dimensional designs that are distinct from those born out of "rectangular thinking". Aside from all that, there are sentimental reasons to prefer forged work, and I share some of those sentiments.

But metallurgically speaking, I can't point to a single piece of hard evidence that any of my blades (or anyone else's for that matter) benefit from being beaten with a hammer, in terms of performance. If anyone has evidence to the contrary they are welcome to present it, I am willing to be proven wrong about this at any time.

I was of the forging mindset when I first got into blademaking and I forged all of my blades for several years, so I'm not just a stock removal guy defending his chosen method. I do forge sometimes, but generally only when it offers something that my bandsaw and grinder don't. The availibility of good-quality barstock in convenient sizes means that this is rarely the case for me when it comes to making blades themselves, though. If I had to make blades from round stock it would be a very different story.
 
FWIW- my post above was more in regard to where this thread seems to be going, rather than to the OP.

The most important factors to that end, IMHO, are steel selection, heat-treat, geometry, and ergonomics.

There is 1 case where I absolutely feel a forged blade is better, and that's with certain damascus patterns... getting the pattern to flow with the profile/lines of the knife. Obviously a lot of stock removal only makers feel this way too, because I've seen many that buy damascus and hire the smith to forge the blade's profile in.
 
Like Nick said, it's a whole new skill set and although I did forge a few blades, I just don't have time enough to learn for now and prefer to focus on honing my other skills.

Like most things in the world, problems come from people trying to push "their" way on others or feel the need to elevate themselves by pushing others down.
 
RMLamey said:
Who says you cant forge tool and stainless steels??
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No one. Certainly not me.

RMLamey said:
if given a piece of lets say... 10" x 1.5" x 5/16" steel of your choice, you only use stock removal, and I forge mine.... well im gonna outcut you at least 9 out of 10 times. If anyone doubts this, we can try it out.
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What are you basing that on? If you want to draw it out to 2" by 3/16" (or however that works out) of course you're going to get a more acute bevel. That's no argument at all... might as well challenge me to grind a knife out of 3" round stock. Of course a forger has more flexabilty with shapes; no one's arguing against that, either.


bladsmth said:
I don't think this will ever be resolved, and the best thing to do is just make knives the way you like to...and call yourself whatever you want to. There is no Bladesmith Police that can tell you what to do.
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There it is.
 
All forged blades need to be ground to be finished.
All ground blades were forged to bar stock size at the factory.

Sigh.
 
There is no advantage to forging other than versatility, the only reason i started was to increase the customer base but i found i wasted less material and enjoyed myself more. More hammering=less grinding, but there is always some grinding.
 
All forged blades DO NOT need to be ground to be finished. You can forge close enough, and the edge thin enough to finish with files, all by hand. Ive done it a few times, Tai Goo does it all the time, among others.

Terrio.... im basing my statement that if given a 10 x 5/16 x 1-1/2 piece of steel the forged blade will out cut the purely stock removal blade is very simple.... I will end up with a blade that is 11" x 2+" with a 4.5" tang, and you will be very limited in blade size/style etc..... Again, we can gladly try this out, using standard/accepted Competition Cutting tasks.

Also for those that keep saying "your steel is already forged from the factory"..... well, maybe hot rolled, but I wouldnt necassarily call that being "forged". When I forge a blade it is within 1/16" from any measurement from the final shape. The edges are forged thin enough to be sharpened right off the anvil.

Here is an edge thickness photo, from an 11" Bowie, right off the anvil....
8725228607_5470b4a8cf_z.jpg
 
RMLamey said:
Terrio.... im basing my statement that if given a 10 x 5/16 x 1-1/2 piece of steel the forged blade will out cut the purely stock removal blade is very simple.... I will end up with a blade that is 11" x 2+" with a 4.5" tang, and you will be very limited in blade size/style etc..... Again, we can gladly try this out, using standard/accepted Competition Cutting tasks.
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Matt, Trying to look at it from a consumers perspective, If a forged blade were to be compared to a stock removal blade, pretty much everything being the same (size, grind, hardness, etc.), would one end up superior to the other or in this case would it be a 50/50 proposition?
 
RMLamey said:
What I always come back to is this, if given a piece of lets say... 10" x 1.5" x 5/16" steel of your choice, you only use stock removal, and I forge mine.... well im gonna outcut you at least 9 out of 10 times. If anyone doubts this, we can try it out.
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From your other post, you are talking about a large chopper competition. Does your result has anything to do with forging? No. It simply has to do with the size of the knife. Give me a piece big enough to make the same knife as you did using stock removal and I am guessing that they will perform somewhat the same. Well yours will surely outcut mine since I never made a competition chopper but you get the point.

This is not a competition folks.:(
 
One difference is that the edge on a forged blade often has a finer grain, and thus is able to harden deeper and harder. This is caused by the forging stress on the grains, and the cycling usually done to reduce the grain after forging. While these processes can also be done on a ground blade, the same degree of pre-HT preparation is rarely done to the degree of a forged blade. Most are normalized, but few have multiple cycles.
 
RMLamey said:
All forged blades DO NOT need to be ground to be finished. You can forge close enough, and the edge thin enough to finish with files, all by hand. Ive done it a few times, Tai Goo does it all the time, among others.

Terrio.... im basing my statement that if given a 10 x 5/16 x 1-1/2 piece of steel the forged blade will out cut the purely stock removal blade is very simple.... I will end up with a blade that is 11" x 2+" with a 4.5" tang, and you will be very limited in blade size/style etc..... Again, we can gladly try this out, using standard/accepted Competition Cutting tasks.

Also for those that keep saying "your steel is already forged from the factory"..... well, maybe hot rolled, but I wouldnt necassarily call that being "forged". When I forge a blade it is within 1/16" from any measurement from the final shape. The edges are forged thin enough to be sharpened right off the anvil.

Here is an edge thickness photo, from an 11" Bowie, right off the anvil....
8725228607_5470b4a8cf_z.jpg
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Why would you put an artificial constraint on the stock removal sized bar?

Why not compare identical sized blades ?
 
12345678910 said:
Why would you put an artificial constraint on the stock removal sized bar?

Why not compare identical sized blades ?
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Becuase my POINT is that one huge advantage in forging is controling shape given a limited stock size...

If both blades are of equal size, properly heat treated (including normalzation/thermal cycling etc) There would be no discernable advantage or disadvantage as an end user. There are cases to be made for grain structure size/alignment etc... but in this case im not even arguing that.... I am keeping it much more simple, and saying that in forging I can do things that you simply cant by stock removel given the same size piece of steel to start with.... very basic really.
 
There are too many variables to say one is better than the other. No absolutes...

Thermal cycles and fine grain are key to performance. Not all steel that comes out of the mills is ready to heat treat.
 
RMLamey said:
Becuase my POINT is that one huge advantage in forging is controling shape given a limited stock size...

If both blades are of equal size, properly heat treated (including normalzation/thermal cycling etc) There would be no discernable advantage or disadvantage as an end user. There are cases to be made for grain structure size/alignment etc... but in this case im not even arguing that.... I am keeping it much more simple, and saying that in forging I can do things that you simply cant by stock removel given the same size piece of steel to start with.... very basic really.
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That's something I agree with, but at the heart of the forged, vs stock removal argument is the insinuation that there are performance results that cannot be duplicated.

I love damascus, integrals and shapes like these you can only get with fire.
 
What about cpm3v? No first hand experience with it yet but I have read it here several times that forging 3v is likely to give you results not as good as if you used the stock removal method.
 
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