Forging Stainless Steel

mete

mete

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Jun 10, 2003
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Does anyone forge stainless steel ? On another forum someone is looking for a stainless spear for his boat. I can't recall that anyone forges stainless knives .
 
I forged a spear in D2 that I keep on my boat. Its as close as you can get to stainless and still be high carbon.
 
someone here said Larry Harley does it....?

(IIRC....:footinmou)



And, of course, Devin Thomas does it with his stainless damascus....(unless I am grossly misunderstanding the process).
 
Also, reading an old thread:

Bernard Sparks
Gil Hibben
Ed Schempp
 
mete said:
Does anyone forge stainless steel ? On another forum someone is looking for a stainless spear for his boat. I can't recall that anyone forges stainless knives .
Click to expand...
Yes. People don't generally forge stainless because the ABS says that stainless can't be forged/shouldn't be forged/doesn't benefit from forging, depending on who you talk to. None of those are completely true.
 
Stainless moves like frozen molasses under a hammer. It has a much narrower forging range than plain high-carbon. It can be done. It IS frustrating.

The benefit is making a piece of steel be the shape you want. Obviously, because of the chemistry, the same benefits of the real magic of a forged blade, the HT, are not the same.

There was a chap from CO forging SS extensively back in the 80's. There was a rumor that he developed some kind of serious lung ailment from sucking in volatilized vanadium. I don't know if it's true, or if it's possible, but state it here just to err on the side of caution.
 
Sean McWilliams used to exclusively forge ATS-34 and 440V for his knives. The notable blades were his Panama fighters.....and he did a few articles on them in Fighting Knives magazine. I think they were convex ground. I dont know what his heat treat methods were though.

I may be wrong here but I think that Cleston Sinyard did some too....stainless Damascus, etc.

I have some 440 and ATS in the shop that I oughta try.....but supposedly you have to keep the heat up quite a bit in forging.
 
This is a good thread. I just bought some 1" x 1/8" ATS-34 (my first time with this stuff) for some neck knives on order. I happen to have another order that I could use this on but, I would need to bend the butt end down to match the handle pattern (full tang). I was planning on trying to forge it over, it's only gotta move about 40 degrees or so.
 
Hey Mete, do you think stainless should be forged by hand or use a power hammer? I've done some 440c by hand, and it sux! I got tired and gave up on it. I was thinking an air hammer would work fine if it didn't make too much stress on the steel.
 
With practice, a power hammer can do just about anything, only faster.
 
hi i have forged 440c for intergeral chef knives lots of times just keep your temp right dont let it get to cold i have some photos of some forged from 1 inch round but dont know how to post them
cheers john
 
I thought I was asking a simple question but I guess I started something , good ! As for an air hammer or by hand ? It doesn't really want to move so I would encourage it with a machine. I wish I had photos of me in school operating an air hammer on the steel I made - that was tough stuff - I wouldn't have wanted to hand hammer that for sure ! But temperature is more critical ,you have a narrower range with stainless. Like fitzo says -frozen molasses .
 
Bob Loveless and Bernard Sparks both started out forging stainless, they could not get it in anything but round bars and had to forge. I believe that if some one would devote a year or so to experiments backed by some lab work a lot could be learned.
 
Mete, When I was younger and did't know better I hand forged a few blades out of D-2 round rod. I gave up on that after a couple blades. Whats this spear going to be used for? If its something that doesn't require a high carbon content I would think a 300 or 400 serries would work if its just for poking fish and it would most likly move better.
 
One of the mags had a picture of a knife by a fellow Canadian that was differentialy tempered SS. I can't remember now whether he had forged it or what. Quite a trick to get a temper line on stainless.
 
Joe Szilaski has been forging D-2 for years, has produced some great blades. So have others, when ever someone says it doesn't work, others will prove them wrong.
 
D2 ain't stainless. Please forgive me for that. This thread is very interesting and promises to promote something. Let's try to stay with stainless. D2 is only a tease of stainless; a border line hopeful.

RL
 
Roger , D2 is called semi-stainless in the knife business. Forging temperature is 1850-2000F. ...The next chapter in your education is to forge a spear point from S30V !!! ....All the steels can be forged , after all they are hot rolled at the steel mill. It's just a matter of how difficult it is.
 
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