Help with steel choice

[Danman8520]

I am planning on attempting to build a fixed blade knife, possibly a few knives. The knives will be used mostly for general purpose such as opening envelopes, packages and other daily tasks. The tricky part is that I also want to use the knife for field dressing game such as Ruffed Grouse which involves cutting the wing bone. The bone is about like a chicken bone.

I really like a steel that holds an edge for a long time. I would not mind spending hours sharpening at a time it if need be. The knife blade cannot chip on the wing bone. I have a few VG-10 Blades but they do not hold an edge as long as I would like, and when in my pocket pennies get stuck in the folders and chip the blade rather easily.

Stainless, almost stainless or carbon does not matter as long as it meets my criteria.

Any Ideas?

 

[hkpokes_you]

Something you might want to look at: alpha knife supply. Google them and look up their available pieces of blade steel. They list the dimensions of their available pieces -- so you could probably buy a piece that comes close to the dimensions of the knife you are planning.

If you were thinking of heat treating the blade yourself the 1080+ or 15n20 that they stock could be good choices if you run them hard.

If you ship it out to someone else for HT you have a much wider array of options. CPM 3V at RC 61 will take a really thin angle and LAUGH in the face of any bird bone.

I would (and do) ship the heat treating to somebody that does it professionally. I have had great experiences with Peters Heat Treat. Again they will show up on the first page of a google search. They have a guy who works with knife makers there...Brad, maybe? I'm not great with names...

 

[Darrin Sanders]

Any properly heat treated steel should work for the purposes you described. One thing that will save you a lot of time and energy is to buy steel that has been annealed and had the scale ground off. It doesn't have to be precision ground, blanchard ground is fine. O-1, A-2, & D-2 are usually spheroidized annealed with the scale ground off and all make excellent cutting tools when properly H/T'd. Of the three my personal preference is A-2. Hope this helps.