Heat build up in knife

J

Jstrykr

Joined
Sep 21, 2000
Messages
25
Cutting up some pretty thick cardboard (almost an inch thick), I noticed the blade of my Military got hot. Not just warm, but hot enough to turn my fingers red from just touching the blade. My question is, exactly how high a temperature do you need to affect the heat treating in the blade of a knife?

Jay
 
I heard somewhere that you have to reach a temperature of about 400 degrees F before temper is effected. If that's true, I'm sure you did not even get close to it.

An interesting question, though.

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Dick
AKTI Member # A001365
 
Right -- and you can't reach that temperature from the heat of cutting. You can in grinding or buffing if you're not careful, though.


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-Cougar :{)
Use of Weapons
 
The concern would be if you got the thinnest part of the edge significantly over 400 degrees so that you would compromise the edge hardness in a short period of time. I think that if that happened you would smell scorched cardboard (even if you couldn't see it).
 
This was a good post, there are times after cutting that my blade feels almost buring hot to the touch. I wasn't sure about the damage possibility either...
 
I haven't read the numbers for most steels, but I recently was startled to read that one of the reasons that ATS34 -- it didn't say 154CM -- was so popular is that it is tempered at over 1200 degrees F. I think this was in one of my old knife mags I recently bought. I know 5160 and 52100 are both tempered under 400 degrees F. I have bookmarked several steel composition sites, but haven't ever seen one that listed the tempering temperature for the steels.

Anyone else seen such a chart/site?
 
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