I started a knife today, its kinda my first real attempt. I dont have any good steel to work with, just a few feet of 1/8 in and 1/4 in low carbon cold rolled stuff, which I know wont make a good blade. But i figured its good to practice on for shaping it and making handles till I get my hands on some good steel.
I was wondering about a heat treat, I read a couple people say that it's not even worth doing a heat treat on cold rolled steel, that it wont get hard. All I have to heat it is a cutting torch, no forge yet. Gonna build a little one in a few days. And will a water quench be good? or might it need a faster/slower quench? I heated a small piece bright red and quenched in water, it seemed harder when I tried to file it and hammered it. Lol, highly scientific test methods.
Here's how it looks. Did part of the grinding with an angle grinder and the rest with files on a file jig I set up.
I was wondering about a heat treat, I read a couple people say that it's not even worth doing a heat treat on cold rolled steel, that it wont get hard. All I have to heat it is a cutting torch, no forge yet. Gonna build a little one in a few days. And will a water quench be good? or might it need a faster/slower quench? I heated a small piece bright red and quenched in water, it seemed harder when I tried to file it and hammered it. Lol, highly scientific test methods.
Here's how it looks. Did part of the grinding with an angle grinder and the rest with files on a file jig I set up.
. My opinion profiling and putting the bevels on a knife is the "easy" part. It's the hand sanding, attention to detail, fit and finish, etc where all the pain in the neck stuff comes in. For a first attempt that looks great so far! Imagine how nice it would be to actually take it from that to an actual functional, finished knife. Why waste the time and effort making something that will never be a functional knife? You can pick up high carbon steel like 1084 or 1095 for 25 bucks or less depending on the dimensions. Fill out your profile you might even have a maker near you that might have something you can buy or possibly get for free near you that you can learn a ton from. Use something you can HT or send out for HT and make a real knife with it. You clearly have the skills and ability to take a piece of steel and make it look like a knife. And if your first one or first 20 don't come out perfect who cares? You learn something new from every knife you make but if all you're doing is getting a fraction of the way there you're only going to have a very limited skill set. Every build from start to finish is going to increase your abilities that much more.
