Fillet knife questions

T

Teknotchr

Joined
Aug 27, 2001
Messages
34
Bought some 1/16" ATS34 to try to make my first fillet knife. I currently have all holes drilled in the handle and have everything polished down to 400 grit. Any recommendations for hardness? (Blades all heat treated for me professionally) Do I need to thin the blade more than it currently is?(Took only enough thickness away to polish the blade, so it's just less than 1/16" now) Blade is currently 5/8" wide, does I need to be narrow this width for it to be flexible?
Sorry for all of the questions.
 
I made some fillet knives from D2, S30V and 154CM recently. After talking to Paul Bos, we settled on 58RC hardness. This worked very well across all three steels. Also, for flexibility, the flex will be almost the same in the hardened state as it is in the annealed state, it just won't spring back to shape well when it's soft. In that sense, it will be less 'springy' when soft so take off enough material, testing it lightly when soft, to your own preference understanding it will be a bit more springy after hardening. Hope that helps. One last comment, I compared the D2, S30V and 154CM in edge holding cleaning fish. The S30V won hands down and is ten times better than any commercial fillet knife I've purchased over the years. Got a buddy that has cleaned a couple hundred walleyes with one of those S30V blades with no problem and he was used to sharpening every time he cleaned fish.
 
My old Rapala filleting knives flex just about right the 4" has a .050" spine at the thickest part , and the 6" has .075", tapering down from there.Flex is determined by thickness not hardness....Tracy nice to hear some real tests on different blade steels, shows how fine S30V really is.
 
I read somewhere in the archives that flex was controlled by width of the blade. I have a couple of commercial blades that are about the same thickness as mine, but the width of the blades is about 1/2". Thanks for the information.
 
The reason you want 57 to 58RC is to keep the chipping down on the edge when you flex the blade, not to make the knife flexible. I'd suggest a convex grind all the way, not just the edge. A strong distal taper is good and personally I like the last 1/3 of the knife (the tip) to be highly flexible, the middle third a little flexible and the back 1/3 no flex. Again, just my opinion.
 
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