Friction Forged Blades work and observations so far.
Yes I will put up pictures, haven’t done that yet on the forum so will see if I can make it work.
I actually got two blades, one is a completed knife and the other is a finished blade with out a handle. This one has a small imperfection at the tip so was set aside for testing. It was sent to me for a destruction test. I am not interested in a bending or destruction test so I plan to put a handle on this one and use it for the test knife. When I am done with it I would be willing to pass it on for others to play with. The finished knife came complete with a nice stag handle (elk stag not sambar) and a sheath. This is Wayne Goddard’s, traditional hunter design, a 4 inch full tang semi skinner. It is flat ground from the spine down to about 0.025 at the friction forged line and then to 0.015-0.017 behind the final edge bevel. The finish is very nice, it looks like a very fine bead blast on the steel and nicely rounded finish on the handle. It fits in the hand with no hard spots. Blade stock is .125 and it tapers slightly to about 1 inch from the tip and then goes down to .030 at the back side of the tip. The back of the blade is squared off with just a little break to keep if from being a sharp edge. I think a little more rounding would make it more comfortable to choke up for close in work like caping or whittling. The sheath is adequate, I would prefer heavier stiffer leather if I was going to wear it while riding an ATV or horse.
I did do some hardness tests on the flat just above the finger guard in the friction forged area. I got RC 64/65. The values that were claimed earlier were 66 to 68. I had a chance to talk with Charles Allen (Knives of Alaska) today about this. Apparently where I was taking the measurements is toward the end of the forged zone. I was not able to test the actual edge due to the taper. In any case 65 is close enough to certify that this blade is hard. Harder than just about anything else out there except maybe ZDP 189.
The blade as furnished was very, very sharp. It would shave hair on my arm with just a little pressure against the skin. Let me say here that I know when I say very, very sharp that this is not a precise gage of how sharp this blade is. I don’t have a machine that can measure sharp but I have my sense and experience from grinding, heat treating, finishing and sharpening thousands of blades with many different steels. I know when a blade is sharp. This will make some of you crazy but you will have to take it for what it is worth. Most of what I will report here is based on my feel, how the knife actually works cutting various materials and how it performs in the hand. I am going to cut rope, leather, and reinforced rubber sheet with this knife and compare it to others I have on hand. I will not always be comparing apples and apples since I do not have other knives with the exact same geometry. I also know that sharpening will vary some and there will be many other variables that cannot be controlled. Large differences in performance will show up but shall differences get lost in the method. In any case I hope the information I get will be useful to those who are considering purchasing this knife...
I did get to some actual testing yesterday. I will do more as time allows but getting knives done and fishing is the first priority. I took the knife as furnished and cut ½ inch rope with it to try to get a feel for how it will perform over all. I did not cut against a scale this time. I made slicing cuts with the whole blade. As I sliced I put on downward pressure on the blade so that it is a combination of slicing and pushing. This is how a knife will be used in the field for dressing an elk and doing skinning and quartering work. Rope is a good approximation of elk hair. For comparison I used a knife that has a similar blade shape. This one is CPM 154 at RC 62, full tang, semi skinner and flat ground to 0.010 behind the edge. This blade was sharpened on a fine Norton Silicon Carbide stone, at a 20 degree (estimate) angle, stropped on leather with the dross from the SC stone embedded in the leather. I then made 6 passes per side on a green DMT diamond stone and then stropped again on leather with Flitz polishing compound. I got this blade to shaving sharp like the FF blade. The difference here is that the CPM blade is at least 4 points softer but is thinner at the edge.
The FF blade would no longer shave at 60 to 66 slices and the CPM blade took 50 to 55 slices to come to the same result. The blades would not shave but also I could feel the smooth spot with my thumb. I did this test twice with both blades and averaged the results. Both blades would still easily cut the rope but I stopped there. I will sharpen the blades and repeat this against a scale and cut to 30 pounds pressure as the next step. Right now I am out of rope and arm hair.
The other area I wanted to take a first look at was toughness. The concern is that a blade at 65-68 RC was going to be brittle. I know that if I go over 64 with 10V and 61 with CPM S90v and 30V that a fine edge is going to be somewhat chippy. A quick test to check this out is to cut wood. I cut at right angles to the grain with enough force to push the blade in to the wood about 1/8 inch and then twist out of the cut splitting off the piece against the blade. I did this on Redwood with both blades 10 times. No chipping that I could see or feel on either blade. I think at least at the edge thickness as furnished the FF blade seems tough enough for work on big game if the user stays away from prying on joints and cutting against bone. Dynamic toughness (chopping) is still an open question. I will leave this to other testers to determine.
I also have a CPM S90V blade at RC 60 and plan to make a CPM 10V blade at RC 64 to the same geometry for additional comparisons.
The next step is to see if I can get the same sharpness on the FF as furnished.
I would say at this point this FF blade is a very high performing blade just based on the little bit of testing. More later. PHIL
Often times it's a mistake to try to get more precision than what you need for the job at hand.