I was wondering if it is possible to make a knife without haveing to heat treat it? Could I use steel that has already been heat treated like a file? The reason being is that I have no idea on how to go about heat treating, and I really dont have the money to buy a whole shop full of things that I would need. If someone could point me into the direction if a way to heat treat inexpensively that would be great also. Thanks!
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Is it possible
- Thread starter hummer784
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RHINOKNIVES
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and you don't need it all at once. get wayne goddard's book $50 knife shop. and keep hanging out here.
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as one variation on Wayne's methods(or maybe he had this exactly, though pretty sure I do it a little different), take regular old grill(I use bottom part of one of those little 3 ft. tall brinkman smokers), fill it with charcoals, light it. Let it get a good ashy coat on coals, then take a hair dryver, and start blowing air all around in there. IT's gonna start getting hot. And I mean really hot. keepy moving dryer around(make sure you're wearing an old shirt, sparks do fly, and they'll burn little holes in your shirt. Wear eye protection too). once it gets "hot enough that your'e sweating like a pig", believe that's how Scott Fulford described it to me when I was first getting starte, should be about right. Can throw steel in then, or have put it in earlier. You use amagnet to test when steel is hot enough(when steel turns non magnetic, you're pretty close), let it soak a little bit longer(once you choose a steel you can get more specific advice on temperatures, soak times, quenching fluid, etc), pull it out and quench it quick. Quench can be old motor oil, transmission fluid, etc. I use a variation on Goddard's Goop Quench, as described in his $50 Knife Shop book, which I highly reccomend.
But there's heat treating using a coupla dollars worth of charcoal and some free time some afternoon(or evening, which helps you get used to what color your steel achieves when it's nonmagnetic). You will mainly have to stick with high carbon, non stainless steels though if your'e doing this at home. Most people can't heat treat stainless at home, at least not without more specialized equipment.
Oh yeah, after the quench, temper the blade in regular oven or toaster oven.
I use this method, with some variations(and several cycles and other refinements to help refine grain structure/increase strength) on O1 and works fine here. That's about the most basic of heat treating. Then you have the other end, for the max amount of control to get as specific a heat treat as possible, where you either end up with a giant shop like Paul Bos, with multiple ovens, cryo, etc for heat treating of air quench steels, or get into methods like Ed Fowler for forging/heat treating high carbon, where he even goes to extremes of counting hammer blows on each side of a knife to try to get a perfectly symmetrical grain pattern(or something to that effect. Sorry Mr. Fowler, I can't quite remember how you phrased the advantages of counting the hammer strokes, though I know in my head what it does, and still marvel at that blade you showed us with that a few months ago).
And I'm done babbling now
But there's heat treating using a coupla dollars worth of charcoal and some free time some afternoon(or evening, which helps you get used to what color your steel achieves when it's nonmagnetic). You will mainly have to stick with high carbon, non stainless steels though if your'e doing this at home. Most people can't heat treat stainless at home, at least not without more specialized equipment.
Oh yeah, after the quench, temper the blade in regular oven or toaster oven.
I use this method, with some variations(and several cycles and other refinements to help refine grain structure/increase strength) on O1 and works fine here. That's about the most basic of heat treating. Then you have the other end, for the max amount of control to get as specific a heat treat as possible, where you either end up with a giant shop like Paul Bos, with multiple ovens, cryo, etc for heat treating of air quench steels, or get into methods like Ed Fowler for forging/heat treating high carbon, where he even goes to extremes of counting hammer blows on each side of a knife to try to get a perfectly symmetrical grain pattern(or something to that effect. Sorry Mr. Fowler, I can't quite remember how you phrased the advantages of counting the hammer strokes, though I know in my head what it does, and still marvel at that blade you showed us with that a few months ago).
And I'm done babbling now
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- May 19, 2003
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Easy
Buy a piece of $10 D2 stainless steel shape it and send it to Paul bos for Less than $25 total you have a knife that will perform the way it should.
Buy a piece of $10 D2 stainless steel shape it and send it to Paul bos for Less than $25 total you have a knife that will perform the way it should.
- Joined
- Jul 9, 1999
- Messages
- 3,316
I used to take old Nicholson files(mill bastard mostly), grind the teeth off of the file, and draw some of the hardness out in the kitchen oven. I'd go for a deep straw color at about 400 degrees for ~ three hours. Make sure you use an after market oven thermometer as the ones on most ovens are WAAAY off to insure temperature accuracy. For example, my kitchen oven is exactly 100 DEGREES HOTTER than the oven says.
After drawing some of the file's hardness down carefully grind out your profile dipping the file in a bucket of water every pass(or two)DO NOT LINGER IN ONE SPOT FOR TOO LONG. This takes time and effort but patience pays off, (impatience is out finding another file to start over again).
After you've got the shape you want begin grinding in the bevels again dipping in the water every pass or two. Make your grinding passes smooth and fairly quick. Lingering in one spot will build up heat really fast and you'll get a nice pretty blue spot where the temper was burned out, bad news.
When you've ground down the knife's bevels to the edge thickness you want, make sure both sides match up to what you want them to look like then break out the MAPP gas torch. Your gonna want to put the blade in a bucket of water with just the tang end sticking out because you now need to cook that tang end until it turns gray in color so it'll be soft enough to drill your handle's pin holes.
If you want a soft spine and hard edge get a metal paint tray and put the edge in ice water about half way up the side and take the MAPP gas torch and start moving it slowly along the spine. After awhile the spine will start showing oxidizing colors as it heats up. First you'll see a faint straw yellow and then a darker straw yellow on thru to a reddish(vermillion) then to a blue-green. It's time to stop heating that area when you get to the peacock blue-green color and then blue. A nice even blue color will have the spine softened up to around Rc 51-54 thereabouts IIRC.
Your gonna have to clean up some light rust from having the knife in water so much at the end of the job but it's not too bad of a clean up.
This method of knifemaking is quite time consuming and may try one's patience a bit because you need to keep dunking that blade while grinding on it and if your using a belt grinder it eats up belts rather handily grinding that already knife-hard steel. But, this is the toll for using blade stock that's already knife hard. After your done you get an enormous feeling of satisfaction at having made a useful knife out of what was once a file.
After reading and remembering all those knives I made this way, I'd highly recommend getting Wayne Goddard's "$50.00 Knife Shop" and religiously taking his advice. It's much easier grinding on soft blade stock and heat treating yourself. Simple Carbon steels are not that difficult to do yourself if you just invest a little time and money getting set up.
Good Luck and all the best,
Mike U.
After drawing some of the file's hardness down carefully grind out your profile dipping the file in a bucket of water every pass(or two)DO NOT LINGER IN ONE SPOT FOR TOO LONG. This takes time and effort but patience pays off, (impatience is out finding another file to start over again).
After you've got the shape you want begin grinding in the bevels again dipping in the water every pass or two. Make your grinding passes smooth and fairly quick. Lingering in one spot will build up heat really fast and you'll get a nice pretty blue spot where the temper was burned out, bad news.
When you've ground down the knife's bevels to the edge thickness you want, make sure both sides match up to what you want them to look like then break out the MAPP gas torch. Your gonna want to put the blade in a bucket of water with just the tang end sticking out because you now need to cook that tang end until it turns gray in color so it'll be soft enough to drill your handle's pin holes.
If you want a soft spine and hard edge get a metal paint tray and put the edge in ice water about half way up the side and take the MAPP gas torch and start moving it slowly along the spine. After awhile the spine will start showing oxidizing colors as it heats up. First you'll see a faint straw yellow and then a darker straw yellow on thru to a reddish(vermillion) then to a blue-green. It's time to stop heating that area when you get to the peacock blue-green color and then blue. A nice even blue color will have the spine softened up to around Rc 51-54 thereabouts IIRC.
Your gonna have to clean up some light rust from having the knife in water so much at the end of the job but it's not too bad of a clean up.
This method of knifemaking is quite time consuming and may try one's patience a bit because you need to keep dunking that blade while grinding on it and if your using a belt grinder it eats up belts rather handily grinding that already knife-hard steel. But, this is the toll for using blade stock that's already knife hard. After your done you get an enormous feeling of satisfaction at having made a useful knife out of what was once a file.
After reading and remembering all those knives I made this way, I'd highly recommend getting Wayne Goddard's "$50.00 Knife Shop" and religiously taking his advice. It's much easier grinding on soft blade stock and heat treating yourself. Simple Carbon steels are not that difficult to do yourself if you just invest a little time and money getting set up.
Good Luck and all the best,
Mike U.
- Joined
- Nov 24, 1999
- Messages
- 4,981
Doesn't have to be D2, in fact I wouldn't use D2 if you are going to be shaping the knife with files. ATS34 is fairly easy to work with, and so far I haven't found 440C to be much different. Make sure you get fully annealed barstock, and you'll be able to work it easily with a hacksaw and files.
Then you can send it to a heat treating service for a couple bucks. I used taxas knifemakers supply once and was vey ahppy with how things turned out. They are a little more economical for someone doing small batches than Paul Bos, although he has earned the reputation as the best in the business.
You can get steel and anything else you might need from www.texasknife.com
Then you can send it to a heat treating service for a couple bucks. I used taxas knifemakers supply once and was vey ahppy with how things turned out. They are a little more economical for someone doing small batches than Paul Bos, although he has earned the reputation as the best in the business.
You can get steel and anything else you might need from www.texasknife.com