Home made blade blank & Question about steel

[Grease]

Hey guys! First, have a picture:

That's a custom blade I've been working on for a few days. It's roughly 11 inches OAL, with a 6 inch cutting edge. The steel is a piece of a carpenters square, shaped on a bench grinder and polished (read: numberings and measurements removed) with a belt sander. It's about as thick as the average Mora, but obviously much larger.

My problem is that I'm not sure what that carpenters square was made out of, which makes it rather hard to get it heat treated correctly.

Does anyone know what the steel might be?

 

[SteelSlaver]

I hate to break it to you, but the chances that a square would be any kind knife quality steel is near zero. No need for them to be. Most of mine are aluminum. You could give it a shot and heat it a bit past non magnetic and then quench in vegetable oil.

Not knowing what steel you have is the number one reason you should use a known steel unless you have the time and experience to figure it out. Aldo's price for 4' of 1/8" x 1 1/2" 1084 is $14+ about the value of a square.

 

[AVigil]

Hey guys! First, have a picture:

That's a custom blade I've been working on for a few days. It's roughly 11 inches OAL, with a 6 inch cutting edge. The steel is a piece of a carpenters square, shaped on a bench grinder and polished (read: numberings and measurements removed) with a belt sander. It's about as thick as the average Mora, but obviously much larger.

My problem is that I'm not sure what that carpenters square was made out of, which makes it rather hard to get it heat treated correctly.

Does anyone know what the steel might be?

Use that as a Template and get some A2 at a tool supplier locally and send out for heat treat or by some steel from Aldo

 

[fishface5]

yeah I'd say practice grinding/shaping that one until you get it 100% perfect, then buy a piece of known steel and when you work that you will have already made your mistakes and learned from doing the first one.

 

[Grease]

Well, it's certainly not aluminum. Too rusty

Whatever it was, it ate about half of my small bench stone grinding it to shape. Given how tough it is, I was thinking it might be some sort of tool steel... It's at least 20 years old, if that matters.

Using it as an outline is a great idea though...

 

[Fox Creek]

If it was a quality tool (Starrett, old Disston, old Stanley , etc) it may well be a carbon steel blade-worthy. If it is recent K-mart, Lowes, Home Depot, etc it probably is not blade=worthy. A quality square needs to be HT steel for durability and stability and abrasion resistance. The only way to know is to try and HT it.

 

[Rapt_up]

I'd bet that at best its a medium carbon steel, it would never need to be high carbon. Think 1040 to 1060 ish...

A basic blank of steel in good steels is pretty darn cheap once you know what you want in terms of size and shape. And then you can have it properly heat treated. The time you put in is worth more than the materials.

 

[tryppyr]

I don't understand your design. What sort of handle are you thinking of putting on it?

 

[milesofalaska]

One factor we might forget is sentimental value or some ‘connection.’ If any metal, like the square has sentimental value, a story behind it and it’s a personal knife, the quality of the steel might not have to be as perfect. An early knife I made was from a shovel that meant something to me. It’s probably as stated, at best some simple carbon steel where getting it past magnetic and quenching in oil will probably work fine, certainly not ruin it. Did you anneal it before you ground on it? Look into that if you have unknown material, as if it has already been hardened- stressed, it is tough on the grinder and belts unless you soften it.