Making knife, which steel?

1095 saves you money, with proper heat treat is near unbreakable and best of all can actually be field sharpened.
 
Agreed, but I'd like to get already heat-treated stuff if I could. Any sources?
 
I don't know of any supplier that sells heat treated steel. The steel sold at knife supply outlets is annealed. In the annealed stage steel is softer and easier to grind. Heat treated steel would be much harder.

You would have to be very careful when grinding heat treated steel. During the grinding process the steel can easily reach temperatures that would destroy the heat treat. This would tend to happen in the areas where the steel got the hottest, so you would have areas that where still heat treated and areas that no longer were. You can keep this from happening by not pressing too hard against the belt or wheel, and by immersing the blade in water every few seconds. By the way, this is something that should be done even with annealed steel. You never want to burn your steel when grinding or it will not uniformly heat treat.
 
Ok, here is a bit of knowledge I have gleaned from the past year of beginning knife making:

1) start with an inexpensive, readily available steel. Go with a carbon steel, as it is easier to heat treat.
-on your first knife, expect to make a couple of "oops" moves. This will not ruin the blade or design, or the steel, for that matter, but it does mean that you want to go with an easily-worked metal.

2) all knives must he heat treated in order to hold a sharp edge well
-heat treating occurs after grinding the blade. The purpose of heating the knife is to harden it; unheated steel is really soft. Grinding a piece of steel after heat-treat would be murder on the tools and would take forever! :eek:

3) knife making is fun and you learn A LOT!
- here is the online tutorial that I and many others have used as a guide to making our first knife: http://hossom.com/tutorial/jonesy/
The link is supplied by knifemaker Jerry Hossom and I came by it over at KnifeForums, in the Newbies section. Here's one hint on heat-treating, in regards to the above-linked instructions: if you do your own backyard heat-treat, you'll need some sort of sustained blower on the BBQ grill to heat the steel thoroughly. A hair dryer or a shop-vac set on the blow function works fine.

4) keep us updated on your plans and progress! :) I hope I've been helpful and haven't overwhelmed you with info. Feel free to ask more questions. Also, the guys in the Bladesmithing section here are helpful and friendly, as well as those at KnifeForums.
 
154cm S30V and tool steel is good but please dont use 1095 carbon you will not be happy
 
Great post TT!

I like 1095 just fine, afaik it's about like 5160 in hardness and edge holding.

There are places available to have something heat-treated, which I think I'll take advantage of. More hassle and money, but it'll be nice to have it professionally done. I wondered if I ground it before or after heat-treating...good to know!

I don't have any great expectations, I don't expect it to look any better than that link to the el-cheapo method. I want function, mostly. Now I need to find out how to polish it, should I want to do that.

I'll pick up some steel soon, thanks for everybody's help!

Still tempted to pick up some CPM-3V or something, but will let you all know how it turns out.

_z
 
I'd like to suggest you heat treat your own first blade. In that case I will highly recommend O1. 1095 will be a risky choice for a first time heat treater. With a little work you can make a mold and pore a small forge. With that and a propane torch you can heat treat steels such as O1 til the cows come home.

RL
 
I'm really liking CPM-3V as a prospect for a take-no-prisoners knife blade. But I'm probably getting ahead of myself with that stuff, as I've read it's tough as nails to work. I can sharpen it, but grinding before heat-treatment may be too much work...I'm planning on buying a sander, and will throw in some ceramic belts (3M #977 holds up well on CPM-3V, I hear). But I don't want to kill myself grinding things, and hand-filing capabilities are nice...

A2 would work great, I'm not sure how well it'd hold up to hard use. I can get it easy, though.

Any suppliers of D2, M2, CPM stuff you guys know about? McMaster-Carr has A2 which could work well enough, I guess, depending on my decision.

I don't have the stuff to do heat-treatment myself by any means. I can get access to or have metal working and wood-working tools that'll work great, but outside of that it's a small operation. No garage or anything to work in, and no blow-torch (yet :mad:).

There are makers that turn out great products in A2 (Trace Rinaldi), D2 (Heafner), and Trace and Chris Reeve use CPM-3V in some of their stuff. So how to decide?

I DO want to be able to use a metal-cutting bandsaw, non-diamond-coated tools (:p) on these before heat-treatment. Methods for cutting 3V: People seem to be on the fence. Crucible says no drilling/cutting, but I've read you can if you take it slow (heating it up via going too fast will basically flash-temper the area you're working in).

Thanks again

_z

EDIT: S30V looks ok too. Corrosion resistance is tempting. Still, not sure how workable it is compared to D2 or A2.

And I'm not getting the sander JUST for knife stuff...I do a lot of projects, including a never-ending story of car work.
 
Although it is hard to work with L-6 can be used without a heat treat, you will however require a carbide drill bit if you want to put any holes in it.

The real problem is finding L-6 in the first place however, sometimes easy and sometimes impossible.
 
There's alot of companies that do heat treating for air hardening steels (not so many for oil and water since those are riskier) that you can send your ground blades to if you can't or don't want to do it yourself. Unfortunately I can't list them for you since I do my own HTing on oil hardening knives, I think Texas knifemaking supplies offers the service, Paul Boss is concidered tops.
 
Hey, you're welcome, z537z! :) I'm glad this thread moved to ShopTalk. As for the steel heating, Texas knife Supply does do heat treating of air-hardening steels. Other than them, I am not sure who specifically does HT, but I've seen many ads in Blade magazine from heat treaters.

As for blade polish and finish, you can get a really nice, hand-rubbed finish by going through the various grits of sand paper/grinder belts. For initial grinding, I go with 50 grit, but am looking to step down to 36 grit, as it should be better for large-scale stock removal. Then, I'll go to 80. After heating, I go to 150 then start hand-finishing with 220 grit. From there, it's simply a walk through the next levels of grits until I finally finish at 600. For hand-finishing, rub the steel with the sand paper (Norton aluminum oxide grit is recommended), using a firm stick/flat metal bar behind the paper as a stabilizer (this will save fatigue on your hands and countless hours of sanding). Take each grit in a different direction and sand with each specific grit until all the scratches are going in a singular, uniform direction.

As for buffing, you can hook up a buffing wheel to a drill press, if you have a drill press. Mine is an inexpensive Dleta brand, and it works fine. You want to sand out imperfections before doing buffing. From my experience, buffing is the most dangerous step, as the wheel can rip the knife out of your hands at any moment, sending the knife plunging through whatever may be in the way. Buffing is an operation that demands total concentration without any distractions or outside interference.

For designing a knife, I like to draw up several ideas and, when I've gotten something I like, I cut the design out and trace it onto t athick piece of cardboard. Then, I cut out the cardboard "blank" and get a feel for the blade and handle. If anything needs alterations, I simply draw and cut out a new blank from the cardboard and assess the new changes. I got the idea of cutting out a pattern from a metal sculpture shop I used to work at. I'd much rather discover that a design is not functional via a piece of cardboard than I would after cutting it out of the metal! :eek:

So, there's a bit more of how I make knives; I hope it wasn't too disjointed and rambling, since I'm kinda tired :yawn:

Any latest thoughts on the steel you may choose?
 
In regards to pre heat treated steel,industrial planer blades usually are D2 and can make good knives without the heat treating,Grind carefully to avoid overheating,it can be drilled using masoniery drill bits, Sometimes you can pick these blades up at resharping shops.
 
Hey nobody's recommened 1084 or 440C or BG-42....... yet. ;)

ZZ can I recommend you make some wooden knives first? You can make one in a half hour (3-4 minutes after you practice some). After a dozen of those you'll be ready for whatever steel you'd like.

Steve

PS, Start easy and choose a steel that you can get professionally heattreated ... for your first knife. Mine was D2 annealled and sent to Pacific Heattreat. If you're looking for toughness and a steel you can work with and you can send out for heat treatment it's a good choice. Then again, so's CM154 and S30V. But if you want CPM-3v Go for it! But buy it annealed and send it out for hardening. Trust me.
 
I've decided on A2 steel, it's tough and easier than 3V or anything like that.

I'll get it treated from Bos, his prices are as good as any.

I have a knife drawn up, have modeled it in cardboard also. It looks a lot like a CR Green Beret: Simple blade, not too complicated anything. Nothing I can't do with a drill press, dremel tool and metal-cutting bandsaw.

And a grinder...I'm not sure what it takes HP-wise, or what speed (SFPM) I'm looking for. I've been looking at Grizzly's cheaper stuff, and the 1" belts run at ~4000SFPM, there's a grinder with a belt on one side, also about 3500-4000SFPM, which is too fast I'm thinking. If 3000FPMm will work, I'll just get that Delta...

1. Other cheap options?
2. Can I tweak the motor easily enough to run lower speeds? I don't care about warrantees, just something that works for me. Don't worry about technical details, this EE degree's got to be good for something :D

This combo sander runs @2000 FPM, which is nearer, but I hear 500-800 is probably the range I'm looking for. I got no problem taking my time not pushing too hard, but I don't want to heat-treat my blades or shred belts for breakfast.

The Kalamazoo 1SM looks ok, but for 175$ I want to be sure I'm getting the right one. Same deal with the Grizzly 2x72" model, at 275$-ish.

But I'd still rather get something cheap and more useful for a variety of stuff.

Thanks for any model input. Find me something for under 200$ that goes at low speed!

_z
 
Do you mean S30V? or CPM-3V?

I've found just about every type of steel online in my searches.
 
I've never heard of it...

all the stuff that ends in "V" is crucible stuff that I'm aware of.

There's S30V, which is different.
Crucible makes CPM tool steel grades 3V, 9V, 10V, 15V, as well as CPM 420V and CPM 440V. Then in tool steel there's Airkool (A2), Airdi 150 (D2), Airkool S (A2S), and Crucible S7 (S7).

There's shock resistant stuff that's S1, S5, etc. but no S3.

Not sure what you're referring to :confused:

_z

EDIT: What are the properties? What's it used for? Typically S is shock resistant, D is oil-cooling, A is air hardening, M is molybdenum high-speed, etc.
 
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