Materials for blades, hi tech, can you help?

Marion David Poff

Marion David Poff

Joined
Oct 8, 1998
Messages
5,403
So for the longest time people have been making knives out of steel.

What else is there and what do we know about it?

Nitinol
Stellite
Talonite
Boye Dendritic Cobalt
Titanium
Beryllium
Ceramic

Anything else?

What about and where?

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Marion David Poff aka Eye, one can msg me at mdpoff@hotmail.com If I fail to check back with this thread and you want some info, email me.

Check out my review of the Kasper AFCK, thougths on the AFCK and interview of Bob Kasper. http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Meadows/1770/kasperafck.html

http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Meadows/1770/index.html


 
Does INFI count?
smile.gif
 
Well once I play around with an INFI blade, I plan on giving it to a metalurgist friend of mine for some lab testing...even if it' destructive...I'm curious.
 
Marion - Kevin McKlung has made blades out of G10 & G11. Obsidian is being used in eye surgery. AG Russell & Lansky made plastic knives. Slate was used in early Ulus. I've seen wooden knives for use (not trainers) made from bamboo.

What is Nitinol?

sal
 
didnt see carbide anywhere......have a friend (welder) who has a big carbide kitchen knife.....have seen scissors made from carbide.....for cutting kevlar (we use it on sailboard decks)...there must be a knife with diamond grit edge somewhere..have seen a guy skin a pig with a broken beer bottle....i guess thats ceramic...but not really.....

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http://www.mayoknives.com


 
Don't use beryllium, it s very, very toxic metal. Maybe beryllium bronze (it is best spring material)
Pavel
 
I just saw a beryllium knife written about in TK, it is part of an EOD kit.

Carbide, like on industrial cutting tools and edges on Emerson designs.

Nitinol is Nickel and titanium, Mission made some folder blades out of it, someone described it as "touch as the hubs of hell". It currently sees life as a memory wire, used by NASA for antennas and robots and dental braces.

G10 and G11 make OK blades I hear, but no edge holding.

Natural materials sure, and bronze and copper but we passed them up for good reason I thought.

What are the next knives going to made of?
Steel is getting a run for it's money.

------------------
Marion David Poff aka Eye, one can msg me at mdpoff@hotmail.com If I fail to check back with this thread and you want some info, email me.

Check out my review of the Kasper AFCK, thougths on the AFCK and interview of Bob Kasper. <A HREF="http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Meadows/1770/kasperafck.html]http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Meadows/1770/kasperafck.html[/URL" TARGET=_blank>

http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Meadows/1770/index.html</A>




[This message has been edited by Marion David Poff (edited 12 August 1999).]
 
Hello,

G-10 is good for last ditch weapon.

Stellite seems to be "magic" !

Why not bone or ebony ...

JM
 
Beryllium knife??? Which TK (Tactical Knives?) it was? Beryllium is very toxic and very soft, look like a lead. Isn't it knife name?
 
I've seen a Carbon fiber knife, actually two, a folder and a fixed blade....couldn't tell you who made 'em though, I haven't the foggiest..

[This message has been edited by tobii3 (edited 12 August 1999).]
 
I think the EOD knife shown in TK was a copper beryllium knife. And the article did say that the dust was hazardous to your health.

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Glenn
 
Just found this thread in the Bladesmith Forum.

http://www.bladeforums.com/ubb/Forum12/HTML/000691.html

Some folks are trying to sleuth out the composition of INFI.

------------------
Marion David Poff aka Eye, one can msg me at <A HREF="mailto:mdpoff@hotmail.com">mdpoff@hotmail.com[/URL] If I fail to check back with this thread and you want some info, email me.

Check out my review of the Kasper AFCK, thougths on the AFCK and interview of Bob Kasper. http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Meadows/1770/kasperafck.html

http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Meadows/1770/index.html</A>

[This message has been edited by Marion David Poff (edited 13 August 1999).]
 
Well, I think there is no reason to separate Stellite, Talonite and BDC. All of them are Cobalt-based alloys.
 
INFI, is a steel. What the exact composition is might be yet to determined by Busse has always refered to it as such.

As for Diamond blades, I had a friend who did a fair bit of bio work and he once remarked that hey used diamond scalpels for some of the more precise work for samples.

An interesting question is are any of the above (or other) materials actually capable of replacing steel as an all around blade material (only considering the ELU)?

-Cliff
 
Greetings,

I received a couple of emails asking for my $0.02.

IMHO, Nitinol is the BEST blade material that I have ever come across. In fact, there probably won't be anything close for quite a while. It has been only recently (since the invention of heavy-duty CNC mills and special cutter technology, coatings, etc.) that machinists have been able to do anything with it. The sample billets we picked up were $500/pound and were made in 1979. A more realistic price now is in the high $900/pound range.

As with titanium, there are different grades of Nitinol. The grade I am referring to is definately not the one that you make eyeglass frames with. In fact, the stuff I am referring to has very little shape memory. We will be finishing up our 5 folder blades soon and will be testing this material. But, in discussions with the original US Navy Nitinol Program Manager, his words were...
1) "If I made a knifeblade out of my Nitinol, heat treated it to RC60 (note: it will go all the way to RC68!) and used a wire-edm machine to put a hacksaw pattern for the blade, I could saw through your heat treated ATS-34 blade and not damage or dull my Nitinol Blade."
2) "This stuff is Harder Than the Hubs-Of-Hell"

This peeked my attention. Stay tuned for some REAL blade material.

Rick

PS, we will have 3 MPF-1 folders for sale once we finish them up. The blades, currently as sitting - annealed, are RC50! Tough stuff......................we will harden them to RC60.
 
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