Fallkniven "Laminated" Steel ???

reconranger said:
Anybody know what the "laminating" process is???

In one of the knife tests the blade on an A1 didn't break off cleanly (like every other knive they test!), but it did "delaminate".

http://www.knifetests.com/

Also, they seemed to think the edge was a little brittle, so it tended to chip easily.....
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Somehow I feel I have to look a little sideways at an opinion about brittleness from people who destroy knives on purpose (for no purpose.)

Personally, I would ignore that opinion. VG-10 is actually very tough as harder stainless steels go. You can make any edge chip by grinding it at too acute an angle.
 
reconranger said:
Not at all! The Japanese swords were folded and hammered over and over and over again upon themselves
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Not really. Most samurai swords of old were made by bunching together a number of steel bars and then forge welding them together as they hammered the blades to length. They weren't folded like damascus. Well, some were, but most were not.
 
Elen said:
About how Fällkniven actually performs the lamination, you would have to ask Peter, I think.
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The answer to that is that Fallkniven doesn't make steel nor laminate it. They don't make knives either. The knives are OEM'd from a Japanese manufacturer who buys laminated steel from a steel mill.
 
guyfalks said:
In addition to being folded, the traditional japanese swords were laminated with a hard skin for cutting over a soft inner core for shock absorbing (tamahagane construction). The soft core would only be exposed on the back of the blade, not at the sides. The Paul Chen/ Hanwei catalog gives a good brief discussion of this construction.
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Tamahagane is not a method for sword construction. It is an artisan steel making process. Neither Paul Chen nor any production sword maker could afford to use real tamahagane. The swords that are made from it are reeeeeally expensive.

There would be no point to making a blade with a soft core. The edge ends up being ground down to the core. No point in having a soft edge.

The laminating process people refer to in this post is called warikomi by the Japanese. The idea is to put a hard core between two soft layers. It provides two advantages. The first is that it makes the hard part of the blade thinner so that it takes less grinding to sharpen it. The second is that it stabilizes the blade by providing the edge holding characteristics of the hard core and the toughness of the soft wrapper. Warikomi is very, very common in Japanese cutlery. I have several warikomi chef knives with VG-10 cores. Very common. Excellent stuff.
 
Fallkniven knives are excellent quality. Unfortunately their prices have risen dramatically in recent years.
 
Knife Outlet said:
There would be no point to making a blade with a soft core. The edge ends up being ground down to the core. No point in having a soft edge.
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kobuse is a laminate with a soft core and hard u-shaped jacket for the edge, afaik. Though I agree that warikomi makes more sense.
 
Knife Outlet said:
Not really. Most samurai swords of old were made by bunching together a number of steel bars and then forge welding them together as they hammered the blades to length. They weren't folded like damascus. Well, some were, but most were not.
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Wrong, most samurai swords were made with tamahagane.

The tamahagane proces is one where the best amount of high quality steel is drawn out of sand in a multiple days taking melting and refining proces.

After it's done a piece of tamahagane would be obtained by breaking the over that it was made in.

Afterwards the piece of steel would be broken up and divided into harder and softer pieces of steel.

Once this was done a laminate would be made with these.

However....everything used comes from that same piece of tamahagane.

So although there is a laminate made, all the steel used comes from the same steel type and even piece of steel that was created in the refinement proces.
 
reconranger said:
Not at all! The Japanese swords were folded and hammered over and over and over again upon themselves....one metal. This creates multiple "layers" that are way way stronger than the homogenous metal could ever be. This is ancient technology
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not quite.

the folding process was done to remove impurities in the steel.

traditional Japanese swords started life as volcanic sand. they'd build a big fire in a pit, then shovel the funky sand into it, along with more fuel, until it went all runny. this process could take over a week in itself.

then, they'd knock a hole in the edge of the pit full of runny metal and let it flow down a precut channel.

once it had cooled, they had a big long bar of metal of varying grades. the master swordsmith dude would tap the steel with his little mallet and figure out where the high-carbon steel was and where the milder steel was.

these two pieces were then seperatly folded to remove the impurities. basically, you break up the steel into little lumps, stick it in a forge and beat it flat. then you break it up into little sheets again, pile 'em up like a club sandwich, stick it in the forge and beat it flat. rinse and repeat until you had two lumps of pure metal. one was high carbon steel and formed the cutting edge core of the blade, the other was milder steel that was laminated over the high carbon steel to give it flexibility.

you beat them both out into a bar, then flatten the milder steel and knock it into a U-shape. stick the bar of high carbon steel into the middle and back into the forge with it and keep beating the crap out of it until you had a straight, sword-length piece of laminated steel.

the tempering process is how Katana get their characteristic curved blade.

fyi: as i understand it, there are still one or two traditional forges in operation in Japan today, so it's possible to buy a sword made using traditional techniques. last time i checked, it was something on the order of US$40,000 for a Katana. bear in mind, there are like seven or eight master swordsmiths working on each blade.

before we had belt grinders and plasma cutters and all the funky stuff, we had guys with big wooden mallets.

guyfalks said:
In addition to being folded, the traditional japanese swords were laminated with a hard skin for cutting over a soft inner core for shock absorbing (tamahagane construction). The soft core would only be exposed on the back of the blade, not at the sides. The Paul Chen/ Hanwei catalog gives a good brief discussion of this construction.
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errr, other way around mate. the hard, cutting steel is in the middle and the softer, milder steel is on the outside.

ditto with Fallkniven's blades. the hard and tempered-to-within-an-inch-of-it's-life VG-10 is the cutting edge in the middle while the slightly softer and more flexible 420J2 is on the outside.
 
The Japanese sword makers used five basic types of steel .They also had eight types of construction -soft core /hard surface, uniform steel throughout , etc.

The Japanese want to protect their knife making industry so they won't sell the steels ,they only sell finished blades ! Therefore Fallkniven blades and finished knives are made in Japan.
 
LX_Emergency said:
Wrong, most samurai swords were made with tamahagane.

The tamahagane proces is one where the best amount of high quality steel is drawn out of sand in a multiple days taking melting and refining proces.

After it's done a piece of tamahagane would be obtained by breaking the over that it was made in.

Afterwards the piece of steel would be broken up and divided into harder and softer pieces of steel.

Once this was done a laminate would be made with these.

However....everything used comes from that same piece of tamahagane.

So although there is a laminate made, all the steel used comes from the same steel type and even piece of steel that was created in the refinement proces.
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Why is it wrong? I didn't say anything to the contrary. Virtually all samurai swords were made from tamahagane in the old days. It was the only steel hard enough to do the job. The poster described damascus. What I said was that samurai swords, with very few exceptions, weren't made like damascus. They were made with steel bars forge welded together. You said the same thing.
 
Knife Outlet said:
Next time use a more obtuse angle. I use VG-10 every single day in the kitchen. There is nothing brittle about it.
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After a year of owning it I gave it to my brother in-law, so there won't be a next time for me.

I found it very odd that it would get small chips near the tip section, water stones are very soft, for a knife touted as a "survival" blade I wasn't impressed. My brother in-law still has problems with it and he sharpens it with a mouse pad and sandpaper.
 
Knife Outlet said:
Why is it wrong? I didn't say anything to the contrary. Virtually all samurai swords were made from tamahagane in the old days. It was the only steel hard enough to do the job. The poster described damascus. What I said was that samurai swords, with very few exceptions, weren't made like damascus. They were made with steel bars forge welded together. You said the same thing.
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Sorry, I quoted the wrong guy ;)
 
Yorkshire Boy said:
After a year of owning it I gave it to my brother in-law, so there won't be a next time for me.

I found it very odd that it would get small chips near the tip section, water stones are very soft, for a knife touted as a "survival" blade I wasn't impressed. My brother in-law still has problems with it and he sharpens it with a mouse pad and sandpaper.
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I have no insight as to why that is happening on that particular knife. What I do know is, I use many VG10 knives, Fallknivens and others, including kitchen knives, folders, and survival/hunting knives, and have no routine issues with chipping, even under extreme use.

I did have some micro chipping on my A2, but I was sharpening at too acute of an angle (as discussed previously). After I changed the sharpening angle, there have been no further problems.

Kevin

Kevin
 
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