Making a knife from forged high carbon blanks

I

idan

Joined
Aug 19, 2015
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5
Hello, I'm pretty new to knife making and I wanted to make my own high carbon steel knives.

I bought these blanks from eBay (http://www.ebay.com/itm/5-Sabatier-1...item234de13bf1) and what I can't figure out is if I need to heat treat/temper them at all? If I do, what's the order of doing it? When do I grind/sharpen the blade and when do I treat it?

Highly appreciate the help,
Idan
 
Hey Dan, If there's heat treat scale on the blade (black) chances are they have been hardened and hopefully tempered.You could also check with a file.If the file digs in very little or just skates off you should be GTG.If the blade's soft then it's your choice(grind it hard or grind it soft)Good luck, Lu.
 
From the description:
I always cherry pick each blank for straightness before shipping but if one gets by me and you receive one that has a slight bend it can easily be straightened by holding it with the flat of your hand against a surface and giving it a light tug. If you receive on that you truly believe that you can’t work with please send me a message and I’ll make it right.
Click to expand...
This indicates to me that the blades are not heat-treated. Judging by the age of the blades, they are most likely a very low alloy carbon steel. I would treat them like 1095.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong but, at the last sentence of the description, it says to give it a slight tug to straighten the blade. So, either it is not heat treated at all or it has been heat treated and tempered already. That's the only thing that stood out to me that may have any significance in terms of hardness. If it isn't heat treated and tempered, the steels stated above are fairly easy to Heat Treat so if you do buy one and it isn't ht'd, you could probably just do that yourself. I say go for it if you like the blade. Couldn't hurt to try and make your own blades though ;)
 
Even if it's been heat treated, I would do it over to have some control of the outcome.
Hoss
 
i might just buy one for fun and get it checked out on the hardness tester.
I've sent the seller an inquiry
looks like something fun to play with :-)

and his response is - "These are very hard now.
They can be ground as is but because I don't know how far they got in the process I would say that they are straight from the forge and should be heat treated after the initial grinding"
 
"Easier to make a knife from scratch was all I needed to read" Thanks for the heads up.Lu
 
Devin, thank you for the WIP - very very helpful. Can you explain in detail (for someone not very experienced) the heat treating and tempering process you went through?

Thanks for the help!
 
After grinding and a little finishing of all surfaces, I did a couple of stress relieve thermal cycles at 1450'f. Straighten. Then I did a prequench from the same temp. Full quench from 1500'f and temper at 375'f.

Hoss
 
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