in love with 5160

Ed Fowler said:
I understand your sentiment. It may be the difference in our past experience or life style. Much of my life I worked alone and my emergency response team was my dog, horse and me. Before that I worked in law enforcement and witnessed the wrecks that were sometimes life threatening, both for human and animal I once wrote an article where several men perished due to a knife that broke. I have experienced knives that broke when I needed them most and had to baby a knife through some very tough times.

Obviously not every knife need to be a High Endurance Performance Knife. There is a place for every knife from the cheap copies out of Pakistan, China to the first knife most of us made years ago.

All I suggest is that each of us who make knives should know the performance qualities of our knives from our own personal testing and be honest with the client who may purchase one.

My crystal ball does not reveal much about the future, I nor anyone else knows what is ahead of us. This is the sole motivation behind my desire to make a knife that I pray will not fail when desperately needed.
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cant argue that
 
This could be epic. If you all want to flat grind the knife to .020 I'll put a convexed edge on it.

For the pursuit of science!
 
chad2 said:
cant argue that
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Sure I can. Our differences are in what is considered failure. A hepk does not need to bend 90 degrees. In a knife, I consider bending a sign of failure. Flexing and just a little bending is ok, but nowhere near 90 degrees. I have blades that will flex 90 and return to straight 'til my arm wears out. They will also cut 2x4s and still shave after at least 2. I've batoned, dug holes in boards, dropped and thrown them. The bending part was never a goal of mine.
 
I could see that, with a fairly thin blade variably tempered. Blade thickness has a lot to do with flexibility and resilience.
 
They are not variably tempered; one took a small set which was easily straightened. The other took no set. Each was flexed 90 degrees 10 times with no damage. One was above HRc 64 with no differential tempering. Salem nailed it. Both are fairly thin. Geometry controls flexibility. Heat treatment doesnt come into play until we pass flexibility and start bending. One was a factory blade, the other I made.
 
Me2-

If you had a 5160 blade test out at greater than 64HRc (how much greater BTW?), I expect it received no tempering at all - differential or otherwise. While I AM NOT calling BS on your work, I am saying be suspicious of hardness testing numbers on beveled work pieces (your finished blades) in general and numbers that don't match a huge history of published hardness data. For 5160, the as-quenched max hardness is probably somewhere south of 63 or 64 HRc (e.g. pre-temper).

Out of curiosity may I ask who did your Rockwell testing?

Best,
-AWL-
 
Andy Lewis said:
Me2-

If you had a 5160 blade test out at greater than 64HRc (how much greater BTW?), I expect it received no tempering at all - differential or otherwise. While I AM NOT calling BS on your work, I am saying be suspicious of hardness testing numbers on beveled work pieces (your finished blades) in general and numbers that don't match a huge history of published hardness data. For 5160, the as-quenched max hardness is probably somewhere south of 63 or 64 HRc (e.g. pre-temper).

Out of curiosity may I ask who did your Rockwell testing?

Best,
-AWL-
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Oh, they weren't 5160. One was 1095 and the other was M2. I was basically agreeing but disagreeing with Ed. Makers and users should test their knives, but we all use different tests to see if we met our goals, which are also different. We obviously don't agree that a good knife that can be counted on needs to be able to bend 90 degrees. On topic, were 5160 easily available in thinner stock, I'd use it happily, though my HT procedure would be different.
 
I would ask how long the blades were and how thick and wide.

Frank Richtig made his kitchen knives out of thin stock. You could bend or flex them to 90 degrees in your hands, with very little force, probably less than 10 pounds torque, they would also return to straight. This is great for a kitchen knife, he could also pound one through a buggy axle with no damage to the edge. He was making knives from the 30's to the early 70's.

His hunting knives were much stronger and while I have two of them have not tried to flex them.
 
They are both pretty thin. The factory blade is an 8" blade Old Hickory butcher knife, and the other was a 5" blade 7/8" wide and a shade thinner than the Old Hickory. The bushcraft blade was too thin and is now a kitchen knife blade after some appropriate reshaping. The Old Hickory went through two 2x4's and would still shave my arm. The bushcraft blade was thrown, dropped onto concrete, batonned with a 3-4 lb. hammer and dug/cut a hole in a board. The final one was when I decided it was a little too thin.
 
Thank you! I believe we can see we are speaking about different species of knife. I do not see any knife as a failure, each knife is developed for a specific reason, specialists if you chose to think of them that way.

For example: What we consider the cheapies are meant to serve as a very affordable venue for someone with limited funds to spend on a knife the opportunity to have a knife. While they are what we call disposable knifes are very worthwhile to some and may indeed save a life. Not only that they are an entry level knife that introduce new comers to the venue of knife. that only is to the benefit of the knife community. I do not see them as competition, as makers I feel our only competition is with ourselves.

Each maker has his personal reasons for every knife he makes. There is nothing wrong if your dreams are different than mine, we are all individuals, this is a good thing. Each of us is proud of the knives we make and there is room for all in the knife community. We get into very lively discussions when we forget this fact or attempt to dismiss anther's values due to our personal prejudice. This is simply human nature. I do not call for 'politically correct" attitudes, but simply that we applaud each individual makers success in recognizing his dreams as valid.

Chad has accomplished some demonstrable success in his pursuit of the knife of his dreams. He is not bashful about honestly demonstrating what he has achieved and I for one congratulate him.
 
Ed Fowler said:
Once you start testing knives to destruction you may note why I always use a slow cooling rate from temper.
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Beyond your testing showing slow cooling from tempering temperature is better, can you elaborate on why you always slow cool? I've seen several other sources that say either it doesn't hurt anything, or it will make the blade more resistant to breaking, particularly in cold weather.
 
Good question Me2

I started using the slow cool from tempering temperature very early. When I was preparing for my Journeyman performance test I wanted everything to be right so I purchased a new gallon of the quenching oil I had been using and use it to quench my blades. While the blades I had been making passed easily, suddenly the blades I made failed terribly, the date for my test was coming up and I was running short of time.

I kept trying and started cooling the blades from temper faster in order to save time. The results were that the blades failed earlier in the test. I returned to the slow cool and while they improved they still failed. In desperation I went back to using my old oil that I had fortunately saved. The blades passed. turns out the outfit I was buying my quenching oil had switched to a faster oil but they had not changed the label! I called them to complain and they said "no one else has complained".

Much later I read about slow cool from temper as being beneficial in an industry heat treating journal. I talked to Rex and he agreed with the information in the journal.

I have not gone back to the fast cool from temper since that time. I have tested blades at - 30F and find they do well when my tempering temperature is in tune with my methods and steel.

I did read about a maker who recommended a quick cool from temper (actually quenched his blades), I called him and asked him why - he said he had read about it in a book and that he had not done any comparison testing personally.

I have not returned to test the slow cool vrs. fast cool personally. Like you said it will not hurt anything, I believe it results in a better blade and why not?

All the work I speak about refers to 52100 and 5160 unless I state another steel was used.
 
Ed Fowler said:
...as makers I feel our only competition is with ourselves.

Each maker has his personal reasons for every knife he makes. There is nothing wrong if your dreams are different than mine, we are all individuals, this is a good thing. Each of us is proud of the knives we make and there is room for all in the knife community. We get into very lively discussions when we forget this fact or attempt to dismiss anther's values due to our personal prejudice. This is simply human nature. I do not call for 'politically correct" attitudes, but simply that we applaud each individual makers success in recognizing his dreams as valid.
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:thumbup: :thumbup: Great stuff there...
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp7xiuxNUGI

so i was trying to make a full uncut video of this knife. so i could show you after all this abuse, how easy it is to strop it back to shaving sharp. well my battery died about 2 mins before doing this lol.

but all in all it took about 10 to 15 passes each side to get it back to shaving sharp. i was so made when after doing all that work it cut out on me what ever you guys get the point
 
I really do love it, sorry I made the video so long but I wanted an uncut video that was supposed to include making the blade completely dull and stropping it back to shaving sharp. As you can see my battery died 2 mins before the stropping I was not going to wait untill it could not cut paper anymore that would have taken a couple of hours.
 
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