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making my 1st real machete

Bill Siegle

Bill Siegle

Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
Joined
Oct 3, 2000
Messages
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Well I have finally gotten around to it. I am using 1/8in 1095. The blade is about 14in long with about a 5 1/2in handle. It is tempering now and I hope my heat induced warp comes out. Heattreating 1/8in material that long is tricky biznis with a torch :) I am tempering it at 450 degrees then I am going to do some testing and see if it needs to go back in the oven.Feel free to give me a shout if anyone has any experiance with tempering of machetes. I am hoping to get a real worker out of this project. I have several nice machetes already but have always wanted to make a custom. I am planning on using brown canvas micarta for the handle slabs. Hopefully I will have it done by the weekend. I will definitly get a pic up when it's done.
 
well the 1st try didn't go through, sooooo I will try posting again. Here is the handle of the machete I have been working on. Hot rolled 1095 is not too much fun for heat treating. Seems to want to go it's own way but 450 degrees and a 6 ton press coaxed it back to straight :) I have hardened it half of the blade's width which leaves it pretty tough. Testing on some black walnut scraps shows some pretty awesome cutting ability and I had no problems with the edge chipping or rolling. I am hoping to get it to the woods and give it a real workout soon. Let me know whatcha think of it.
 
Looks good, I would have chosen L-6 or 5160 if I could get it thin enough, but 1095 should give you good performance.
Btw, nice handle desighn, it looks real comfortable and it shouldn't sling out of the hand.
 
I agree that 5160 or L6 might be better suited but I just couldn't lay my hands on them in .125 thickness. The thinnest I can get in 5160 is .200. I really wanted to go with a lighter weight blade for this project. Besides I have never found 1095 to give me any problems in the strength catagory :) The handle slabs started out at .75 thick each and I started grinding and filing away. The pommel area is still about 1 inch thick. Should help keep it in the hand.
 
That's really nice Bill. I do like that handle work. A NO-SLIP back end. Great for a slinger. You did good.

You can not over temper; in number of sessions or length of time.

Roger
 
1/8inch 1095 at around 50-54HRC is supposed to be good for machetes. Ontario make machetes of those sort of specs.

Possibly a bit heavy ? But would chop real well.

I've never tried but I wonder if it would be easier if the HT was performed on the profiled bar stock THEN ground the edge in.

Not sure how you do your HT, but whenh I've had HT-ed large pieces, at pro HT-ers I dont get much warpage which is the major concern on blades like these. With that sort of bevel there's not much grinding to do on hardned steel and at 52HRC, you could even use a file to do it if desperate.

Cheers. Jason.
 
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