MagnaCut customs - Books Closed

It's in the mail.
 
After some time considering Larrin's toughness comparison charts, I have come to the conclusion that a hardness of 62-63 RC is the right choice for all of these knives, big and small. The only thing that could possibly be an issue, in my opinion, is super fine tips being a little bit brittle, but this is the case with just about any steel that is hardened to a high level. And when they are too soft, they are prone to bending, so in the end, I feel that harder is better, and if a fine tip is desired for a hard use knife, it should be fine in profile, but with a slightly thicker cross sectional thickness to increase robustness.

If anyone with a custom coming from me in this steel desires a different hardness, feel free to reach out to me via email or PM and let me know while we still have time before Jarod cooks the blades for us. Thanks!

Toughness chart.jpg


Quick note: None of the knives I am doing in this steel are choppers. I would not want to do a chopper in MagnaCut, but AEB-L instead.
 
An update is due on this thread, as it's been a while. Jarod's wife has been involved with a lot of the logistics that keep orders moving, but been less involved in the business lately because of this:
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/much-appreciated-shop-addition.1794071/

And Jarod has had other unexpected stuff going on as well but I know he's doing his best to keep up, while also juggling his full time job. His quality has always been worth the wait.

Currawong said:
~62.5 looks perfect!
Click to expand...

I have reevaluated my thoughts on this after Jarod and I recently discussed the heat treatment. He made a compelling case for going a little tougher, given this steel is new, and he has not heat treated much of it yet. Considering the heaviness of the blades, and the thin geometry I am planning for their edges, I agreed with his suggestion. We have opted to play it safe with 60-61 on these. Based on the chart, this should give us slightly better toughness than AEB-L at 63 RC, which I think will work quite well, and we're still expecting much better corrosion resistance and edge retention than AEB-L at that hardness also. So they are now fully heat treated and tempered, and I am advised they should be hitting the last stage before shipping tomorrow, which is surface grinding.

Thanks everyone for your patience and understanding.
 
David Mary said:
An update is due on this thread, as it's been a while. Jarod's wife has been involved with a lot of the logistics that keep orders moving, but been less involved in the business lately because of this:
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/much-appreciated-shop-addition.1794071/

And Jarod has had other unexpected stuff going on as well but I know he's doing his best to keep up, while also juggling his full time job. His quality has always been worth the wait.



I have reevaluated my thoughts on this after Jarod and I recently discussed the heat treatment. He made a compelling case for going a little tougher, given this steel is new, and he has not heat treated much of it yet. Considering the heaviness of the blades, and the thin geometry I am planning for their edges, I agreed with his suggestion. We have opted to play it safe with 60-61 on these. Based on the chart, this should give us slightly better toughness than AEB-L at 63 RC, which I think will work quite well, and we're still expecting much better corrosion resistance and edge retention than AEB-L at that hardness also. So they are now fully heat treated and tempered, and I am advised they should be hitting the last stage before shipping tomorrow, which is surface grinding.

Thanks everyone for your patience and understanding.
Click to expand...

Lower RC sounds like a reasonable alternative. I didn't realise it could be made tougher than AEBL. If Magnacut can be a 'super AEBL' (tougher, more stainless, better edge holding) that's extraordinary.
 
AEB-L is tougher than MagnaCut, but like any steel, loses toughness as it gains hardness. AEB-L at 63 is pretty tough for a stainless steel, but I have been able to make it fail in certain tests involving hard use and thin geometry (i.e. chopping dry hard wood chipped out a thin AEB-L edge at 63 RC). So MagnaCut at 60-61, which reports a slightly higher toughness than AEB-L at 63 seems prudent to me, and will still get thin geometry, but I will probably opt for more robust microbevels. I'm going to grind and test my own MagnaCut blade first before I do the commissions.
 
David Mary said:
An update is due on this thread, as it's been a while. Jarod's wife has been involved with a lot of the logistics that keep orders moving, but been less involved in the business lately because of this:
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/much-appreciated-shop-addition.1794071/

And Jarod has had other unexpected stuff going on as well but I know he's doing his best to keep up, while also juggling his full time job. His quality has always been worth the wait.



I have reevaluated my thoughts on this after Jarod and I recently discussed the heat treatment. He made a compelling case for going a little tougher, given this steel is new, and he has not heat treated much of it yet. Considering the heaviness of the blades, and the thin geometry I am planning for their edges, I agreed with his suggestion. We have opted to play it safe with 60-61 on these. Based on the chart, this should give us slightly better toughness than AEB-L at 63 RC, which I think will work quite well, and we're still expecting much better corrosion resistance and edge retention than AEB-L at that hardness also. So they are now fully heat treated and tempered, and I am advised they should be hitting the last stage before shipping tomorrow, which is surface grinding.

Thanks everyone for your patience and understanding.
Click to expand...
I think 60-61 will be perfect in this steel and well worth the wait! BTW, I was doing a lot of cutting today with a new production fixed blade I just bought, and both the stock thickness and edge thickness were ridiculously obtuse, making cutting a chore. Luckily I had my David Mary custom Street Beat Tribute in my car. I went and grabbed it and it made short work of all of that cardboard. You do a fabulous job with your grinds, David, and you saved me some work today!
 
Yesterday, I was informed that the MagnaCut blades were slow to surface grind. Jarod said that they seemed to grind like M2 or D2. Looks like I'm in for some pain when it comes time to grind these. 😬 🤷‍♂️ 😅

I haven't received the ship notification yet, but will update this thread once I do.
 
They arrived two days early.

My capacity for drilling pre heat treat steel is good to go, but I was still figuring it out at the time I started this run, so this is what they looked like when I sent them to Jarod, along with an email containing drilling instructions. The idea is to cut out the material between the half inch holes for weight reduction and balance.

Pre heat treat MagnaCut.jpg


And you can see the original blanks were not yet surface ground.

Here is what I have gotten back from Jarod after drilling, heat treatment, and surface grinding, which shows the quality of his service is always worth the wait.

IMG_2098.JPG

IMG_2106.JPG


IMG_2097.JPG

I have a few other blades as well that I can use for testing.

Here's the first one to hit the grinder:

IMG_2121.JPG


My impressions are MagnaCut wants to take longer to get into shape but it responds well enough. I should have gone all the way to zero with the 36 grit. After I shut down the shop, it took me easily half an hour starting on 150 grit diamond to get a 15°per side primary edge. But I think grinding this will not be the ordeal I anticipated. The steel seems to build heat slowly, which is a plus when stock removal takes so much longer. The steel feels strong. But I got the tip really thin, and was pushing pretty hard as I ground it against the 150 grit diamond plate. The thin end of the tip only bent over a bit, no snapping. I finished profiling the edge to 15° with a 20° micro. It feels aggressive, though I didn't put the time into it yet to have a super fine edge that pops hairs. It does slice paper so a good place to playing with the blank and seeing what I can learn. Then refine the geometry and sharpen some more, and see what we've got....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top