"Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Martensite..." by the intrepid Mr. Cashen

No need to get upset Kevin,... I think your metallurgy is better than most (though not “infallible“), and that you make a GREAT knife!... just trying to tweak your perspective a little. LOL :D

... and just to make sure you know... “art historians” can nerd out with the best of them. :)
 
Art history was always very hard for me in college, especially the graduate level classes. The memorization alone was enough to kill you. I managed to keep a B average.

The hardest part was trying to figure out what the professors wanted.??? They always accused me of just regurgitating the "facts", or just re-stating what someone else already said. It was very puzzling? Finally, I think I figured it out,... they wanted me boil it all down and to put it into my "own perspective", from an art historical standpoint. That was hard!

As “artists” I think it will always be important to recognize our place in history, try to put it into perspective,... and to keep a broad base of “concept”, and an open mind.

"When" you made a piece of art, is almost more important the "what" you made.

... It would be a pretty boring place, if everyone made knives, or looked at them, the same…
 
Tai Goo said:
Kevin, I’ve heard you use the term “best knife” quite a bit. However, what the best knife is, is subjective not objective, a matter taste, opinion and perspective. No one has a monopoly on it.

We have to be careful here not to become our own worst enemy, or fall into the same category as the one’s we criticize…

... I’m not trying to make a better knife, I’m trying to make a knife better. LOL :D
Click to expand...
You are correct that the “best knife” is entirely subjective and I would never force my definitions on anybody who didn’t ask for it. But if makers build their whole image on chest thumping about the superiority of their product they make themselves a target and beg for the obvious questions to be asked.

Whenever I use that term it would be in reference to the sales pitches of others, I like to avoid that sort of rhetoric myself. Folks will notice in all of my posts on any site on the internet that there is a distinct absence of references directly to my work, I often get dogged for not posting pictures of my knives enough. I just firmly believe that my methods and metallurgy can stand on their own and that my knives can stand on their own as well. I carefully avoid giving the impression that I would ever say that all this science, metallurgy and gadgets make my knives any better than the rest. That would reduce it all to just more sales gimmicks, and then I would hardly be unique now would I ;)? I just think that common sense may be less insulting to the intelligence of my customers and a welcomed breath of fresh air.

I am not a pioneer in metallurgy and I haven't discovered anything unique, magic or special that will change the world as we know it- and neither has any of these other yayhoos who want you to think they have, otherwise they sure as heck wouldn't be wasting their life trying to scratch out a living making knives!

I have no problem proclaiming that there is no such thing as the "best knife", each person will have their own preferences and everything made by man is flawed in some manner. Skinning knives make lousy machetes and vice versa. All I hope to do is make the best knife I can make based upon my philosophy and if the customer finds my priorities to match their own, I invite them to give one of my blades a try. If meets our mutual expectations then it is a success.

I will not however allow myself to be governed by the silly self serving invented definitions of other makers. I am very proud to say that none of my knives will easily bend to 90 degrees; in fact they are designed with strength to resist such silliness even to the point of breaking!:eek: How shocking is that coming from an ABS stamp holder? Indeed the only knives I ever allowed them to tell me how to make are the two that I bent for that test and then tossed in the corner. I decided to take their test and it is their test so I guess I should do it by their rules. Any knife I would want to own myself is built on strength not ductility and I want it as a knife not fantastic gimmicks.

I like to think I eliminated relativism in my knife design as well. I could chase my tail trying to make a knife to fit every oddball criteria thrown at me or I could approach it from a logical perspective. First- what is a knife? A tool for cutting things. So what is the primary function? Cutting. Now I have my first priority in its performance – the ability to cut things. Now I can look at other desirable qualities but I will not allow any of my secondary priorities conflict or interfere with the first or I have compromised my goal and have made less of a knife by my own definition. I can make knives that specialize in certain cuts (slicing, chopping etc…) or certain materials (skinning, wood chopping etc…) but just cutting things is enough of a specialty for the tool to be pure. Is a knife a prybar or is it a knife? Would I want to skin a deer with a crowbar? Would a shaving sharp edge on a crowbar compromise its primary use? You bet it would, indeed it would make it dangerous to use. I will not compromise my cutting tool because some twit isn’t smart enough to get a crowbar, a screw driver, a hammer etc… Also as a craftsman one of my secondary priorities is that the tool must be beautiful. Not only will this be different for each customer, but it will be different for each knife, some embellishments look great on a dagger but are just gaudy on a hunter. And the appearance must NEVER compromise the first priority, as soon as it does I can just make knife shaped art instead. Not that there is anything wrong with such art, many blades that I have dreamed of owning would never be used for anything but adorning my mantle, but that is not how I personally approach making my knives.


Why am I starting to feel like I should be saying all this while reclined on a leather couch with Tai sitting in a wingback next to me taking notes and reassuring me with "yes, I see", ''hmmm, very interesting" "how did you feel about that when you were a child?":D
 
You'll all have to try and excuse my "Art Professor Syndrome", once you've had it... it's hard to shake! LOL :D
 
Kevin R. Cashen said:
You are correct that the “best knife” is entirely subjective and I would never force my definitions on anybody who didn’t ask for it. But if makers build their whole image on chest thumping about the superiority of their product they make themselves a target and beg for the obvious questions to be asked.

Whenever I use that term it would be in reference to the sales pitches of others, I like to avoid that sort of rhetoric myself. Folks will notice in all of my posts on any site on the internet that there is a distinct absence of references directly to my work, I often get dogged for not posting pictures of my knives enough. I just firmly believe that my methods and metallurgy can stand on their own and that my knives can stand on their own as well. I carefully avoid giving the impression that I would ever say that all this science, metallurgy and gadgets make my knives any better than the rest. That would reduce it all to just more sales gimmicks, and then I would hardly be unique now would I ;)? I just think that common sense may be less insulting to the intelligence of my customers and a welcomed breath of fresh air.

I am not a pioneer in metallurgy and I haven't discovered anything unique, magic or special that will change the world as we know it- and neither has any of these other yayhoos who want you to think they have, otherwise they sure as heck wouldn't be wasting their life trying to scratch out a living making knives!

I have no problem proclaiming that there is no such thing as the "best knife", each person will have their own preferences and everything made by man is flawed in some manner. Skinning knives make lousy machetes and vice versa. All I hope to do is make the best knife I can make based upon my philosophy and if the customer finds my priorities to match their own, I invite them to give one of my blades a try. If meets our mutual expectations then it is a success.

I will not however allow myself to be governed by the silly self serving invented definitions of other makers. I am very proud to say that none of my knives will easily bend to 90 degrees; in fact they are designed with strength to resist such silliness even to the point of breaking!:eek: How shocking is that coming from an ABS stamp holder? Indeed the only knives I ever allowed them to tell me how to make are the two that I bent for that test and then tossed in the corner. I decided to take their test and it is their test so I guess I should do it by their rules. Any knife I would want to own myself is built on strength not ductility and I want it as a knife not fantastic gimmicks.

I like to think I eliminated relativism in my knife design as well. I could chase my tail trying to make a knife to fit every oddball criteria thrown at me or I could approach it from a logical perspective. First- what is a knife? A tool for cutting things. So what is the primary function? Cutting. Now I have my first priority in its performance – the ability to cut things. Now I can look at other desirable qualities but I will not allow any of my secondary priorities conflict or interfere with the first or I have compromised my goal and have made less of a knife by my own definition. I can make knives that specialize in certain cuts (slicing, chopping etc…) or certain materials (skinning, wood chopping etc…) but just cutting things is enough of a specialty for the tool to be pure. Is a knife a prybar or is it a knife? Would I want to skin a deer with a crowbar? Would a shaving sharp edge on a crowbar compromise its primary use? You bet it would, indeed it would make it dangerous to use. I will not compromise my cutting tool because some twit isn’t smart enough to get a crowbar, a screw driver, a hammer etc… Also as a craftsman one of my secondary priorities is that the tool must be beautiful. Not only will this be different for each customer, but it will be different for each knife, some embellishments look great on a dagger but are just gaudy on a hunter. And the appearance must NEVER compromise the first priority, as soon as it does I can just make knife shaped art instead. Not that there is anything wrong with such art, many blades that I have dreamed of owning would never be used for anything but adorning my mantle, but that is not how I personally approach making my knives.


Why am I starting to feel like I should be saying all this while reclined on a leather couch with Tai sitting in a wingback next to me taking notes and reassuring me with "yes, I see", ''hmmm, very interesting" "how did you feel about that when you were a child?":D
Click to expand...

Very good Kevin!... and by the way, I love your rants,... because they strike so close to home.

It would be nice if would could actually sit down together sometime and compare notes,.... maybe even swing a hammer. :)
 
I do love the work of the Japanese sword smiths. I do however have the same thoughts about the mystical power of their steel. Watching a show on Discovery Channel? I think, on making modern equals to ancient weapons. They chose a samurai sword. This was a guy in a garage shop (like most of us) who had never made one before. With some minor tutoring from Howard Clark. Specifically the Heat Treat. The guy made a sword that actually performed just about the same or better than a traditional sword. The new sword from 1086M cut mats almost thru, survived a cut on a piece of armor, the traditional sword chipped, survived a helmet hit, the traditional sword was not used here, and then survived a bullet. The bullet shot was enlightening, the high polish of the traditional sword had a cleaner cut but both survived. So which is better? Both have their intrinsic values. What can be done without modern equipment is pretty amazing and I hope it will never be lost. The search for the best blade will never be satisfied. As has been mentioned it is subjective and some makers use it to their fullest advantage.

Chuck
 
For a long time,… I didn’t even know that I had my “own perspective”.

What a wake up call that was!
 
Tai Goo said:
Very good Kevin!... and by the way, I love your rants,... because they strike so close to home.

It would be nice if would could actually sit down together sometime and compare notes,.... maybe even swing a hammer. :)
Click to expand...

That sounds like too much fun let's make a point of trying to make that happen. There never seems to be any disagreement when smiths swing hammers together as it is so much fun that it is all good!:thumbup:
 
Kevin,... I'm not making crowbars either, and even if I was, I wouldn't see the point in bending them back and forth in a vice a dozen times as a test. I can't think of any steel tool that needs to do that. Even if it is "possible" it doesn't sound very "practical", or applicable to knives. Out of pure curiosity I have bent a few back and forth, just to see, but, don't use that as a standard practice or to promote my work,... and have always come off wondering why I really did it. :D

I don't have a problem with "experimental/creative metallurgy" as long as it's not passed off as "real metallurgy". However, there are probably some things we can learn through all of it. Yes! It's all good if kept in "perspective"...

However,... I won't be governed or intimidated by a bunch of hype and gibberish either.
 
Now what I would like to go to is a hammer-in featuring Tai Goo and Kevin Cashen, perhaps with a collaborative project knife
That could be fun to watch!

-Page
 
Tai Goo said:
...and even if I was, I wouldn't see the point in bending them back and forth in a vice a dozen times as a test. I can't think of any steel tool that needs to do that. Even if it is "possible" it doesn't sound very "practical", or applicable ...
Click to expand...

You nailed it Tai!:D This is the silliest part of the whole thing, what good is a crowbar that easily bends??!!!:confused: I have never used a prybar that would bend when you pushed it! In order to be effective prybars need to be stiff and resist bending entirely. So I have no idea what these folks making the taffy knives are trying to accomplish (well actually I do, but it aint got anything to do with tool function, perhaps just using the tools ;))
 
Not to stray too far off topic, but I always interpreted the ABS cut and bend test as a standardized way to test a maker's ability to control the heat-treat process, not as the standard for all hand forged knives.

And as far as the two of you getting together to swing a hammer, it sure would be fun to watch. :) I can't imagine what kind of a blade you'd bang out together! Now if only there were a hammer-in somewhere in, say, the Catskill region of New York where the two of you could conveniently spend a few moments at an anvil comparing notes among a large group of makers, students, and enthusiasts...
 
Kevin R. Cashen said:
You nailed it Tai!:D This is the silliest part of the whole thing, what good is a crowbar that easily bends??!!!:confused: I have never used a prybar that would bend when you pushed it! In order to be effective prybars need to be stiff and resist bending entirely. So I have no idea what these folks making the taffy knives are trying to accomplish (well actually I do, but it aint got anything to do with tool function, perhaps just using the tools ;))
Click to expand...


Yeah, who needs a knife that's tied in a knot,... or wants a knife that bends easily?

I like a fair amount of "spring" in most of my blades...

I understand what spring is, how to achieve it, and apply it to various knives,... but what exactly goes on inside the steel when it springs?
 
That could make a whole other thread but when you have enough carbon or other alloying elements stuck between the iron atoms they will keep slip from occuring. Slip is the mechanism by which most steel deforms when planes of atoms "slip" past each other and end up in the next space over (mete may point out twinning since it is rather fascinating as well, but the majority of deformation in soft steel is from slip). If the atoms within those millions of planes slide one space over to find a new resting place the metal will retain that position and you have permenantly deformed it. If however movement is limited to just half way and the atoms fall back into their original positions when the load is removed then you have springiness or flex. However it must be strongly emhpasized that the ammount of force required to flex cannot be affected by heat treating at all- stiffness is solely dependent on shape and thickness. If the matrix is over loaded with carbon atoms (as from a fast quench) then it will resist slip so rigidly that it can break. But as you temper that steel you will find a place where enough carbon is still interfering with slip to cause things to resist deforming yet not be brittle. You see a really good spring does not bend either, so I still don't know what the taffy knives are for.
 
O.K.

Here's my question?

Since the outside radius of the flex or spring has to stretch, and the inside radius has to compress geometrically,... where does the space come from and where does it go? We don't see any bucking or wrinkling on the inside of the radius when the blade springs, but is that what's happening? Where does the stretching on the outside radius come from? We don't see any separation or pulling apart on the outside.
 
It is my interpretation of my experience making rings (jewelry) that all else being equal the outside radius unless you forge to physically draw it does not stretch, and since you cannot compress a solid to take up a smaller space, the inside radius effectively upsets. Is my interpretation wrong?

-Page
 
sunshadow said:
It is my interpretation of my experience making rings (jewelry) that all else being equal the outside radius unless you forge to physically draw it does not stretch, and since you cannot compress a solid to take up a smaller space, the inside radius effectively upsets. Is my interpretation wrong?

-Page
Click to expand...

Sounds right. The material has to go somewhere and it doesn't really crinkle or compress or expand, it just moves.
 
I think most bladelovers are in love with the romantic notions of the samurai and their tools of the trade.

In my humble opinion the "best knife/steel" is the knife you're happy with and your customer buys.

Will
formerly known as badbamaump
 
Kevin R. Cashen said:
You nailed it Tai!:D This is the silliest part of the whole thing, what good is a crowbar that easily bends??!!!:confused: I have never used a prybar that would bend when you pushed it! In order to be effective prybars need to be stiff and resist bending entirely. So I have no idea what these folks making the taffy knives are trying to accomplish (well actually I do, but it aint got anything to do with tool function, perhaps just using the tools ;))
Click to expand...


I have actually used a prybar that bent. It was a cheap made-in-China PSO, so I threw it away.... :)
Taffy knives! I love it! :thumbup:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top