Looking for bars of high carbon steel

F

FatFrumos

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May 7, 2018
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Hi. I want to try and learn how to forge an integral knife, so I started looking around for rectangular or round pieces of high carbon steel, but so far couldn't find anything. I looked at Alpha and Jantz. Is it a thing I can actually buy or would I have to forge weld several pieces of the same steel together?

Thank you!
Luka
 
FatFrumos said:
Hi. I want to try and learn how to forge an integral knife, so I started looking around for rectangular or round pieces of high carbon steel, but so far couldn't find anything. I looked at Alpha and Jantz. Is it a thing I can actually buy or would I have to forge weld several pieces of the same steel together?

Thank you!
Luka
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Bar of knife steel? I got one word for you: railroad spike.

The way it works is when you fire up the coal it puts more carbon in the spike, and makes the carbon high. Make it hot enough to sparkle. The sparkles is the carbon going into the rail spike.

Once you figure that out it's time to get a pre-spun mower blade. Make sure it has at least 500 hours on it mowing so it's good and spun. John Deere. Fold it like a taco over the pre-carbonized spike, and be sure to leave on the black paint, it's just like built-in flux. Heat it up until it glows and beat it over a rail tie with a railman's engineering hammer. Hit it hard.

Beat it into a knife blade and heat it up again, then throw it in the creek. Use a magnet to fish it out, and scrape it with a horse file. If it skids then you did good. Do this 500 times and then maybe, maybe, you'll be ready to make a knife worth a darn!
 
I just looked it up. Jantz has 2-1/16 inch roundstock of 52100. I mean that should be more than big enough.
 
the easiest thing to find is W1 round bar - if you google it you will find Many places that sell it. I would not go larger than 1" if you are forging by hand, unless you have a lot of energy and good shoulders!

3/4" works well for anything but a large kitchen knife.

Bill
 
As suggested try looking O1 or W1 drill stock . Store called Alcobra metals in Spokane Wa. advertises O1 over an inch in diameter
 
don't know where you are but...

Grainger

toolsteelservice

metalsdepot

pops knife supplies has Hitachi 1085 round bar that I've used which is nice too....
 
If you are forging, heat up a spot in the middle and hit it on the end for the guard area to get fatter.
It's called upsetting.
 
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