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Recommendation? Making kitchen knives

M

MysticBlades

Joined
Feb 25, 2018
Messages
2
So I have just recently gotten into knife making and wanted to make some good kitchen knives. I have a little experience with 1095 steel but wanted to make my knives out of stainless steel. I was looking into it and was thinking of using CPM S 110V steel due to it's high carbon content.

Any thoughts, recommendations, or what have you would be greatly appreciated. I have very basic tools at the moment but I can heat treat in house so long as it doesn't need to have a cryo treatment.

I apologize if I posted this is the wrong section as I am new to this site and it is my first post, but please be brutally honest with me.
 
AEB-L and all stainless steel will benefit from cold treatment. The good news about AEB-L is that you can do it with dry ice and some solvent, things that can be had at your local supermarket and big box home improvement store for cheap. AEB-L also just happens to be considered an ideal stainless kitchen knife steel by many. The other piece of advice that I would give is that the Japanese, Germans, French, etc have been making kitchen knives for ages, so find a design that you like and steal it. There is no need to go ugly right out of the gate, but lots of people apparently haven't gotten that memo. ;)
 
S110v because of its high carbon content?

That doesn't make sense. S110v would be a rather poor choice for the typical kitchen knife. Kitchen knives are thin edged, low included angle push cutting blades for the most part. S110v is a high carbide forming steel, making it very wear resistant, but unable to support a fine, thin edge.

AEB-L like jdm recommends, is low carbide, tough and can support a thin fine edge. There are other stainless steels that do this as well, all will be easier to process (grind and finish) as well as perform better in the intended task.
 
kuraki said:
S110v because of its high carbon content?

That doesn't make sense. S110v would be a rather poor choice for the typical kitchen knife. Kitchen knives are thin edged, low included angle push cutting blades for the most part. S110v is a high carbide forming steel, making it very wear resistant, but unable to support a fine, thin edge.

AEB-L like jdm recommends, is low carbide, tough and can support a thin fine edge. There are other stainless steels that do this as well, all will be easier to process (grind and finish) as well as perform better in the intended task.
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What they Said! Also S110V can be a pain to grind & finish! AEB-L or even Ole 440C works fine for Culinary Knives
 
AEB-L is great for kitchen knives ... and is very beginner friendly.
My go-to culinary steel is CPM-S35VN. It makes superb knives.

The carbon content in the super steels, like S110V, is there to combune with the alloying elements and make carbides. Some of these steels have 30% alloying, so it takes a lot of extra carbon. The only amount of carbon that goes into making the martensite ... which is what makes a knife hard ... is .84% carbon. That is all the the iron can use. Any excess carbon make some sort of carbide.

AEB-L has just under .84 % carbon, and enough chromium to be stainless. All the carbon gets tied up with the iron making martensite., The chromium stays elemental and helps prevents rust and staining. Since there are no carbides formed, the grain is super fine, and the edge can be made VERY thin. That is why razor blades are AEB-L.
 
For the reasons Stacy mentions above AEB-L can easily be made very sharp and very easily sharpened by the user. Some people feel it is similar to simple carbon steels in ease of sharpening but provides the benefit of being stainless.
 
You might get by with home treatment and AEB-L, 14c28n etc... if you want to make a knife for yourself that won't rust.
But if you are seriously interested in switching to stainless, tough simple ones, you should gear yourself to reliable HT equipment and LN.
For defeating RA, dry ice(CO2) would be enough, but LN would have more shelf life.
More complex steels have high chances to give bad results with less than super tight ht conditions.
 
jdm61 said:
AEB-L and all stainless steel will benefit from cold treatment. The good news about AEB-L is that you can do it with dry ice and some solvent. The other piece of advice that I would give is that the Japanese, Germans, French, etc have been making kitchen knives for ages, so find a design that you like and steal it. There is no need to go ugly right out of the gate, but lots of people apparently haven't gotten that memo. ;)
Click to expand...
Yeah I was planning to steal some of the Japanese styles as I personally feel they are the most aesthetically pleasing. Is there a certain solvent you would recommend or just anything that I can find?
 
Kerosene? Acetone?
MysticBlades said:
Yeah I was planning to steal some of the Japanese styles as I personally feel they are the most aesthetically pleasing. Is there a certain solvent you would recommend or just anything that I can find?
Click to expand...
 
Aeb-L, 440c, 154cm, and cpm154 all make very good kitchen knives. I'd personally avoid the super high vanadium stuff.
 
As Geoff mentioned CPM154 has been popular for kitchen blades. A number of guys including Joel at Cut Brooklyn have used it before switching over to AEB-L.
 
I'm trying out some RWL34, which is suppose to be a lot like CPM154. And it's also suppose to take a nice polish, if that's of interest.
 
I did really like the one kitchen knife i have finished in cpm154 ...it was just about as nice to finish as aebl but held an edge a good deal longer, it took a screamin edge too
 
I think I have heard of M4 as a kitchen knife. I am going to try one at least. It's not stainless though .
Has anyone tried it ? Thoughts?
 
timos- said:
I did really like the one kitchen knife i have finished in cpm154 ...it was just about as nice to finish as aebl but held an edge a good deal longer, it took a screamin edge too
Click to expand...
I find cpm154 a lot nicer to finish than aeb-L myself.
 
For the dry ice slurry, I use three to five pounds of dry ice and a half a gallon to a full gallon of denatured alcohol (from the paint dept. at Home Depot). It makes a batch of slurry that will last a few hours and do a big batch of stainless knives. Crush the DI with a hammer into smaller chum]nks, mix the pulverized DI and alcohol in a fairly deep pan ( tin foil baking pan) by putting the alcohol in first and adding the DI slowly. It will boil up at first, but as soon as it starts to cool down, it will just bubble.

You only need to let the blades sit in the bath for 5 -10 minutes, as longer time will do nothing extra.

When done, let the DI sublimate until it stops bubbling. Pour the alcohol into the can with a funnel - CAUTION, it is -100F and will freeze your skin on contact . Once in the can shake it up a bit, then leave the cap just a bit loose overnight to let any dissolved CO2 escape. Cap tight and use as normal for cleaning up epoxy, and future DI baths.
 
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