Magnacut: Can it be forged?

Magnacut, as all steels, can be forged. You just need much better control with temperatures.
 
Michael Black said:
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WOW: Thanks for that!

Watched most of this video. What an info-dump. I learned way more bout heat treating than IK had ever really been exposed to before . . .and now I have a headache! But as George Castanza so often said on Seinfeld, "Its not you. Its ME."

With all that new info, I cringe in memory of the one knife I made forty years (or so) ago. In the early 1980s, I worked offshore in the Middle East; 28/28, 12 hrs a shift. Sometimes we worked like beavers and sometimes we had days or weeks of forced inactivity. I took a piece of scrap spring steel and worked on that with an angle grinder till it looked like a knife. Couldn't really get it annealed, and the grinding took time. Had no real idea on how to heat treat it.

Got with the welder and he used an open flame on it 9in bright sunlight) till it was red hot. When he gave me th nod. I put it edge down on a brick submerged about an inch (less?) in used motro oil. Rocked it to include the tim and dropped the whole thing nto the deeper part of the pan till it cooled. And that was that . . .no other treatment.

The edge had a continuous line from ricasso to tip along the edge; a Hammon line, I guess. Looked great and eventually did sharpen up. It finished out nicely with grit and elbow grease with crap brass and tropical hardwood from a packing crate for the handle.

If I had any idea back then of the true complexity of heat treating steels, I'd have never got it started.

Dunno what happened to it all these years later.
 
VorpelSword said:
WOW: Thanks for that!

Watched most of this video. What an info-dump. I learned way more bout heat treating than IK had ever really been exposed to before . . .and now I have a headache! But as George Castanza so often said on Seinfeld, "Its not you. Its ME."

With all that new info, I cringe in memory of the one knife I made forty years (or so) ago. In the early 1980s, I worked offshore in the Middle East; 28/28, 12 hrs a shift. Sometimes we worked like beavers and sometimes we had days or weeks of forced inactivity. I took a piece of scrap spring steel and worked on that with an angle grinder till it looked like a knife. Couldn't really get it annealed, and the grinding took time. Had no real idea on how to heat treat it.

Got with the welder and he used an open flame on it 9in bright sunlight) till it was red hot. When he gave me th nod. I put it edge down on a brick submerged about an inch (less?) in used motro oil. Rocked it to include the tim and dropped the whole thing nto the deeper part of the pan till it cooled. And that was that . . .no other treatment.

The edge had a continuous line from ricasso to tip along the edge; a Hammon line, I guess. Looked great and eventually did sharpen up. It finished out nicely with grit and elbow grease with crap brass and tropical hardwood from a packing crate for the handle.

If I had any idea back then of the true complexity of heat treating steels, I'd have never got it started.

Dunno what happened to it all these years later.
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Shame- we'd all love to see that.. knife.
 
Yeah. Wish I still had it too. We grow too soon old and too late smart.

hugofeynman said:
Magnacut, as all steels, can be forged. You just need much better control with temperatures.
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There are production shops that forge nice knives from stsainless steels such as 440C. I guess that the tighter tolerances required by modern high end stainless knife steels would just complicate their forging process and slow down their workflow.
 
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BluegrassBrian said:
Shame- we'd all love to see that.. knife.
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A mental picture then:

It had a 4" or 5" drop point blade with some belly, finished to 600 grit. The handle looked a lot like my EDC Buck 110, with brass bolsters and end pieces sandwiching scaled of a tropical hardwood that looked terrific. The handle shape was what Randall Made calls "Border Patrol" in profile, but the sides were flatter. Layered the wood scales with thin sheets of brass shim stock next to the tang. Used brass brazing rod for pins and put it all together with a grey colored two-part epoxy used for permanently sealing threads on down-hole casing.

I had access to an angle grinder, a bench grinder of some power and a massive drill press . . . but most of the work was done with hand tools in the mechanic's shop. . . Good quality files of every shape and lots of heavy duty sanding strips. Had plenty of guidance and advice from like minded men of skill and experience as well.

It took me most of a month to do, but filling the time was the object.

At the same time, another guy had made a nice hunting knife the previous "hitch" and while I was there, finished it with a poured aluminum handle. Cast right onto the hidden tang as a squarish rough block and worked it down to shape by hand.

Never again in my life have I had such access to the tools, materials and expert guidance . . . or paid time off to do the work.
 
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