First knife will be a liner lock folder.

J

J S Machine

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Oct 15, 2007
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Hey folks, My name is John, and I just found this forum a couple of days ago. I have been intrigued about making knives every since I was able to cut metal lol..(I am a toolmaker)

As for any first post, I am sure that you guys get asked the same questions. I have decided to start making knives as a hobby, and maybe even sell some eventually. I do have a good day job building all sorts of dies, but I would like to get into this to maybe supplement my income.

I designed a linerlock folder, approximately 7.5 inches long, with a blade length of about 3.5 inches. it's a pretty good sized knife, average I guess you could say, but good size. It actually looked huge on paper, and seems kind of small now that I have some of the pieces made lol.

As far as metal choices, I had a few to choose from, but not sure really what would be best. I have D2, A2, CPM (old stuff- not 154), 01, cruwear- or is it cruware..S7, and a few others. I had heard of people making knives out of some of these, but wasn't really sure what to use. I decided on cruwear for the blade, and 01 for the frames/linerlock. I figured this would work okay for a first knife, and provide a good oppurtunity to learn.

I am following some sort of tutorial that I found on this site, if I had to go back and get it I would never find it..but it's the one where the guy makes the small linerlock knife and it has blue colored handles. Very informative article, basically from start to finish. Some of you may know which one I am talking about. I am doing my own thing for some of it, because I have good experience working metals, especially tool steels. ;)

My knife will probably have aluminum handles, with wood inserts, probably an exotic wood. I don't quite know what to use there, and I surely will be asking questions about that when I get to that point.

the questions that I have at this point are these:
1. When I heat treat my blade i will use a regular high temp oven, and the blade will be wrapped in stainless foil. (just as you would do a die part)..It will then be drawn back, and stress relieved. What I am worried about is keeping the blade from warping. Should I sandwich it between 2 thicker pieces of tool steel and clamp them together to help it stay straight?? How would I best do this? I am probably going to go for about 60 RC. Is that too hard?

2. Also as mentioned above the frames/linerlock are made of 01 material. I know that most of the time to get the hardness out of this stuff you have to quench it in oil. I also know that 01 is notorious for coming out of the oil looking like a piece of bacon, especially if it's thin...:thumbdn: what would be the best method for doing the 01 parts?

right now the blade is about .140" thick It will probably end up a little thinner because I don't particularly care for wide blades. maybe end up about .125"..

the frames/linerlock are about .08" right now. The will remain that size. Don't want to go any thinner cause 1- it's a pain in the rear on a surface grinder and 2 -I don't want to jeapordize the rigidity of the lock. I know that it being a little thicker might help.

I will post some pics if you guys would like to see the progress.

Thanks for your responses. Any hints or help will be appreciated.
 
You may want to reconsider using 01 for the liners. At .08 it's gonna be a heavy knife and with HT, it's simply more difficult to handle than titanium. With Ti, you just cut to shape (drill/tap, etc.) bend your lock and away you go.:thumbup:
 
Hi John, I wanted to give a bit of input here. I also agree that O1 will be a difficult material to use for your liners. At .08 you'll have a very stiff spring in O1 and you may end up cutting a relief in it anyhow. I'm assuming the liners are already spring tempered so you don't have to heat treat them. Difficulty aside, O1 is the rusting-est steel I've ever come across. If you put a nice clean finish on it expect your liners to rust rather quickly.

The other issue you can run into with using steel-on-steel is galling and wear. The spring tempered O1 will wear much more quickly than your hardened S7, although S7 probably has a lower abrasion resistance. I agree that Ti would be a much better choice, it's relatively cheap to get a piece large enough for one knife, it doesn't rust and won't gall or wear as quickly.

As far as the S7 goes, the steel has a high impact resistance but a fairly low abrasion resistance so it can be difficult to put a good edge on it and keep it on. Of the steels you listed I'd possibly look at D2, which will be fairly stain resistant and take an incredible edge. I'm not sure what the make of your CPM is though. When you stress relieve/draw back the blade, just do it in a regular oven or heat-treat furnace. You can do this with just the bare blade and won't have to worry about warp. @ 500 degrees, D2 will give you very good toughness and a high hardness. The S7 looks to be a little soft after any tempering, but the as hardened RC looks all right. Maybe a very low temper would do well for it?

Of course, you can take everything I say with two grains of salt, my folder building experience is limited to all of one that I am still completing.
 
JS,

Welcome. You are not alone here (there are a few metal heads here).

I'll make some observations about this as a hobby, probably coming from a similar point of view as you.

I thought I knew something about heat treatment (I mean, come on, I'm a machinist with in house heat treat and I covered the subject at NC State!) but it turned out I don't know $hit. I used to quench my O1 in chainsaw bar oil. Feh...

I don't know what your regular shop rate is, but be prepared for a shock when you realize the time it takes to make a knife and how much it will sell for. I usually get between $40-$80 / hr for jobs I do in my shop. Knife work is worth less than half that. Sigh...

To answer your questions.

1: Plate quench, works great for air quench steel. Like AcridSaint said, D2 is really good. However, being a Die steel it is designed to retain austenite to reduce dimensional changes. You'll probably want sub zero as part of the quench to complete your martensite conversion for a knife blade, otherwise you'll be missing out on something like 20% of the martensite. A2, same way.

2: Best method for the O1 parts may be to make them out of something other than O1...

Do you go over to AMC? Are you using CNC? Any good at CAD/CAM?

See ya around,
Nathan
 
First off what is AMC?

and second..yes i run cad/cam and program cnc's

feature cam, mastercam, gibbs cam, powercad, surfcam, and a few others.

cincinnati, haas, mori seiki, and ezpath bridgeport machines.


I guess you are right about not knowing sh_t about heat treating. We do most of ours in house, except for over 2000 degrees, -that gets sent off to an atmosphere controlled oven.

I have heard some terms here that I am sure I have never seen...:o
 
"First off what is AMC?"

alt.machines.cnc, it is a usenet group, thought perhaps you might be a member there.

"and second..yes i run cad/cam and program cnc's

feature cam, mastercam, gibbs cam, powercad, surfcam, and a few others.

cincinnati, haas, mori seiki, and ezpath bridgeport machines. "


Cool. I use Pro/E and Pro/NC, program Haas, Fanuc and about to get a fixed gantry Onsrud with an Osai control (split table, two Y axis, that will be weird)



"I guess you are right about not knowing sh_t about heat treating. We do most of ours in house, except for over 2000 degrees, -that gets sent off to an atmosphere controlled oven.

I have heard some terms here that I am sure I have never seen...:o"

There are a bunch of folks here who know their stuff. Mete and Kevin R Cashen pop to mind. Find stuff they wrote, you'll pick up a lot.

Welcome to the forum,
Nathan
 
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