Graduating from 1084

C

C.I.TR3

Joined
Jan 14, 2014
Messages
22
Fairly new knife maker but have really been enjoying the process and everything I have learned. Thanks to all. I have made a few forged knives out of various metal (files, springs, etc) but have lately been focusing on stock removal as I want to really get better at grinding. So much to learn. All my ground knives to date have been done with 1084 which I am heat treating in my homemade propane forge, quenching in canola oil, and tempering in a toaster oven. Unfortunately 1084 (and even 1080) has been getting kind of hard for me to find. Aldo is out till the end of the month, USA knifemaker is out of the sizes I want, Alpha Knife Supply will not sell to me as an individual because I live in Washington State. I am still trying to contact Kelly Cupples to see what he has.

Anyway, as I continue my search for 1084 I had some questions about working with other types of steel.

1) What other carbon steel would you recommend for a beginner who wants to do home heat treat.
2) Is working with the "more advanced" steels all the same except the heat treat process? That is, is it easy for a beginner to make a knife out of any steel I want as long as I am sending it out for HT or is the actual grinding and finishing process different.
3) I would really like to try some stainless steel for some of the small kitchen knives I am doing as gifts. Is there a good beginner stainless option? Can it be heat treated at home? Is it a big jump into stainless steel?

This is strictly a hobby for me but as I do not have a lot of time, but I do not mind spending some money on something I enjoy. Also, because of my limited time and the way I work I would prefer to heat treat at home (plus it is a facet of knife making that I really find interesting). Would getting a HT oven allow me to step up into these other types of metals?

Thanks for the help. I try to glean as much as I can by reading and searching but have not found what I was looking for.
 
Excellent question, I too have found 1080 and 1084 in appropriate sizes hard to find. I emailed Kelly, couple of weeks ago with not reply.
Anxious to here what others have to say.
Just wondering why aldos has tons of the 1095 but no 1080, or 1084?
 
1) 15N20, Aldo's 80CRV
2) Most carbon steels will work the same (drilling and grinding), except the hot rolled ones which are harder. The stainless steels drill OK but grinding is harder.
3) With what youhave you should probably send out stainless to be heat treated (a kiln would help). If you are sending out the stainless for heat treat pick anything you want. I would suggest AEB-L, CPM 154, or CPM S35V.
 
I would suggest O-1, you can get an excellent blade from it, though the heat treat is a bit more complicated than 1084, and comes in a ton of different sizes. Personally I love 1084, but it's hard for me to get in larger sizes for forging. W1 and W2 are another good choice, though I don't know about availability.

As for stainless, I've heard of oil quenching 440C, but haven't tried it. I do use CPM 154, but I have an oven and get a thermos of liquid nitrogen to do it.

There's also 1095, which for some reason isn't very popular, but makes for an excellent blade.

Before I got my oven the stainless I did I sent out to Paul Bos, can't recommend his shop enough for heat treating. Even with an oven, it'd be cheaper for me to send stainless out for heat treat, but since I don't do much it's a lot more convenient to heat treat myself.
 
A quality heat treat oven will allow you to not only heat treat simple carbon steels, but stainless also. The process for heat treating carbon vs stainless is a bit different, but with research, you can do either.

In addition, a heat treat oven will be far more accurate in obtaining and holding tempering temps than a toaster oven. You can always do a snap temper in the toaster oven or the Kitchen oven while the heat treat oven cools down.

You might want to try some O-1 while waiting for 1080/1084. With stainless, give CPM 154 a try. Without a heat treat oven, you will need to send it out for heat treating.
 
Where in Washington are you? I think I still have a bar of 1084. I'll check tonight.
 
No one has mentioned it, but for a while, 5160 has also been a "beginner" steel. It has just a bit of alloying which gives you a tad more time than the 10xx steels when quenching and would work very well with your current setup and oil. It's fairly cheap and available in a variety of dimensions. You can just do stock removal with it, but also forges well.

A heat treat oven would be a great investment if you can afford it. I'm in the process of building a PID controlled salt pot and plan to use "salts" that are able to go high enough temperature to heat treat some stainless. I'm planning to try AEB-L, as many have good things to say about it and it has a fairly easy heat treat as far as stainless goes. The oven would allow you to try any number of the different stainless ones that require longer soaks at temp with ramping, etc.

Good luck to you.


Jeremy
 
For non-stainless steels yes, 5160 is a good choice for the home heat-treater. In addition, Aldo's 80CrV2 is excellent as well as his 1075.
 
Great. It sounds like there are a number of carbon steel options I can try that I can still do an effective heat treat on with the equipment I have. I will research a few of them and give one a try.

As far as stainless, it may be a little bit harder to work with in regards to grinding. I can use any stainless I want and send it out for heat treat or get an oven and do some of the easier stainless steels at home. An oven would also help me in doing a better carbon steel heat treat than my forge and toaster oven.

Thanks for the help, it will really help get me started on more research. I will be fun to try a new steel.

Tryppyr, thanks for the offer. I live on Camano Island but am actually in the Bellevue/Issaquah are for a training class till Friday this week. If you have something you would be willing to sell, let me know.
 
The steels that don't seem "critical" in terms of temp control are 1075/1080/1084. 15N20 and 80CRV2 are a little more finicky to get the most out of, but won't get messed up too easily if temps vary a bit more than ideal. I have never used 5160 so I can't comment on it. O1 needs good temp control. You will get really inconsistent hardness without it.
 
C.I.TR3 said:
Fairly new knife maker but have really been enjoying the process and everything I have learned. Thanks to all. I have made a few forged knives out of various metal (files, springs, etc) but have lately been focusing on stock removal as I want to really get better at grinding. So much to learn. All my ground knives to date have been done with 1084 which I am heat treating in my homemade propane forge, quenching in canola oil, and tempering in a toaster oven. Unfortunately 1084 (and even 1080) has been getting kind of hard for me to find. Aldo is out till the end of the month, USA knifemaker is out of the sizes I want, Alpha Knife Supply will not sell to me as an individual because I live in Washington State. I am still trying to contact Kelly Cupples to see what he has.

Anyway, as I continue my search for 1084 I had some questions about working with other types of steel.

1) What other carbon steel would you recommend for a beginner who wants to do home heat treat.
2) Is working with the "more advanced" steels all the same except the heat treat process? That is, is it easy for a beginner to make a knife out of any steel I want as long as I am sending it out for HT or is the actual grinding and finishing process different.
3) I would really like to try some stainless steel for some of the small kitchen knives I am doing as gifts. Is there a good beginner stainless option? Can it be heat treated at home? Is it a big jump into stainless steel?

This is strictly a hobby for me but as I do not have a lot of time, but I do not mind spending some money on something I enjoy. Also, because of my limited time and the way I work I would prefer to heat treat at home (plus it is a facet of knife making that I really find interesting). Would getting a HT oven allow me to step up into these other types of metals?

Thanks for the help. I try to glean as much as I can by reading and searching but have not found what I was looking for.
Click to expand...

I have been doing this for a bit over a year now, and ordered a kiln last week. I could do a good job with a forge and pyrometer (my forge has a good amount of thermal mass, so once equalized, I could maintain pretty consistent and accurate temps.) but found more complex steels such as 52100 were more challenging than they needed to be. I have some stainless that I have been wanting to try as well, and living in rural Canada, self sufficiency is important. Knowing what I need from heat treat temp control now, a kiln is the way to go. A PID forge is the second best bet, but stainless is out then.
 
C.I.TR3,

I find that I have two 48 inch long bars of 1084. One is 1.25: wide, the other is 1.5 inch wide. You can have either at my cost, if you like. Neither is perfectly flat right now, so you'll have to straighten it out. but that is simple enough. PM me or send me an email to arrange a meeting while you are in the area. I work in Bellevue.
 
gudspelr said:
No one has mentioned it, but for a while, 5160 has also been a "beginner" steel.
Click to expand...

5160 is fairly hard to find in anything but (relatively) huge bars. If a person wants to make a lot of wide 1/4" thick choppers, and/or can forge it down, that's fine. For the majority of knives... not so much.

Will52100 said:
I would suggest O-1, you can get an excellent blade from it, though the heat treat is a bit more complicated than 1084, and comes in a ton of different sizes.
Click to expand...

O1 does indeed make a great knife if HT'ed properly. Some of my more "traditional" clients prefer it over anything else except maybe 1095 (which happens to be less expensive and also pretty widely available in a lot of sizes).

Another nice thing about O1 is that if you have anything resembling an industrial/machine shop supply store near you (MSC/Fastenal/Grainger etc) they will be able to order it in if they don't already have the size you need... so you can likely just go pick it up. Be sure to ask for it in surface-ground if not precision ground stock.
 
james terrio said:
5160 is fairly hard to find in anything but (relatively) huge bars. If a person wants to make a lot of wide 1/4" thick choppers, and/or can forge it down, that's fine. For the majority of knives... not so much.



O1 does indeed make a great knife if HT'ed properly. Some of my more "traditional" clients prefer it over anything else except maybe 1095 (which happens to be less expensive and also pretty widely available in a lot of sizes).

Another nice thing about O1 is that if you have anything resembling an industrial/machine shop supply store near you (MSC/Fastenal/Grainger etc) they will be able to order it in if they don't already have the size you need... so you can likely just go pick it up. Be sure to ask for it in surface-ground if not precision ground stock.
Click to expand...

You can get O1, A2, D2 and others right from Amazon. They merged their website with Smallparts.com after they bought it a few years ago. Amazon supply is not a bad place to look for some things. Nothing too exotic but basic tool steels they seem to have.
 
james terrio said:
5160 is fairly hard to find in anything but (relatively) huge bars. If a person wants to make a lot of wide 1/4" thick choppers, and/or can forge it down, that's fine. For the majority of knives... not so much
Click to expand...


Woops. You might be right... I haven't had to buy any in a while now. I want to say I got some from Kelly Cupples that was thinner stock. There is also a leaf spring shop that sells their 5160 drops in various dimensions. I have some 1/8" and 3/16" stuff, but you're right-if all a guy had was 1/4"....that's a LOT of material to grind off :).


Jeremy
 
ponderingturtle said:
You can get O1, A2, D2 and others right from Amazon.
Click to expand...

I'm aware of that. I was hoping to remind folks that those alloys are so common (with good reason) that they may also be available locally.

gudspelr said:
Woops. You might be right...
Click to expand...

I usually am. I don't just spout this stuff off the top of my head... it's part of my job to research these kind of questions.

:D

Just teasing, guys. All the info posted so far is valid. Any of the low-alloy steels mentioned above are pretty easy to work with and can make really good knives with proper geometry and HT. :thumbup:
 
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