making new from old

fz1boxer

fz1boxer

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Nov 24, 2008
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the place i work is a printing company and all of our work is sheetfed heavy weight paper(board)
we have guillotine cutters that use knives from IKS.
every so often they become to short to use in our cutters so we grind the edge off and............pitch them:eek:
most of the blades are over 60" long and 5" tall.
would it be feasable to resue this steel to make knives or woud the hardening process make it to difficult.
thanks
fz
 
i bet if you had say a plasma cutter you could prolly fassion blades out of them without needing to re temper them just make sure to make your paturns large enough so you can remove the metal that is un hardened by the cutting and you should have a very cheap beater knife.

as for re working the steel unless you have a knowlage of hardening/tempering and a forge/some other means of heating steel consistantly then it would be quite hard to do the work.
 
i had one of thoes blades but never did anything with it but you could cut it down and make smaller knives from it. i have access to a plasma cutter but i was going to use my right angle grinder to cut the blank by cutting grooves where i wanted to break off what i didnt want. you clamp the blade in a vise and break off what you dont want. make sure to wear safety glasses and gloves if you try this method. if you're careful and pour water on the blade often you shouldnt ruin the heat treat. the same when grinding down a blade.
 
richard j said:
i had one of thoes blades but never did anything with it but you could cut it down and make smaller knives from it. i have access to a plasma cutter but i was going to use my right angle grinder to cut the blank by cutting grooves where i wanted to break off what i didnt want. you clamp the blade in a vise and break off what you dont want. make sure to wear safety glasses and gloves if you try this method. if you're careful and pour water on the blade often you shouldnt ruin the heat treat. the same when grinding down a blade.
Click to expand...

so basicaly use a zip-cut for your cutouts right? (lot less lost material than an angle grinder) with water as a cooling agent of course.

but anyways what kind of steel are those blades made of?
 
i dont know exactly what the blades are made of but its tool steel of some kind. i dont have the air driven cutoff so i use a small right angle grinder with 1/4" thick cutoff discs and cut a groove in the steel so i can break off what i dont want. i still profile out my blade blanks in this manner even though i have strips plasma cut to width and length.
 
ah i get it now. you use the grinder to roughly shape the blade out of the rectangle you had plasma cut. makes more sense now.
 
i get strips cut with a plasma torch that i profile out with the right angle grinder. the paper shear blade i had was about 4" wide and about 3/16"-1/4" thick. if i were to make a knife from it i would mark out the profile of the blade, grind a groove along the line and break off the piece i didnt want. then i would use the right angle grinder to finish profiling out the blade. its much faster and easier to score and break a piece of metal off compared to grinding it all the way off with the grinder.
 
yea indeed. i did a couple of beaters/throwers using just a bench grinder angle grinder and a sawzall. it took a long time.
 
I'd suggest cutting it up and forging to shape but I think you will find most guillotine blades are D2 and therefore a bit temperamental under the hammer. What about making some integral hatchets?

Peter
 
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