new guy woes

Z

zooker89

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Sep 15, 2014
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Ok, so I am finding this a little more difficult than expected.

A little background. I am an accomplished woodworker (furniture, musical instruments, turnings, fine cabinetry etc.) so precision is not out of my wheelhouse. I have built three custom motorcycles and many other fabricated metal things, but this knife making thing takes a lot more than I expected.

My hats off to all of you making quality knives!

While I didn't expect to make a great knife right off the bat, I did expect to make something that would become a shop tool at a minimum.

Since I used a steel (1095) that requires way more experience for HT, I have pretty much just made scrap steel out of my first attempt. At least in woodworking you can burn the scrap for heat! My second try leads to the questions below:

1. If I overheated an otherwise good pre HT grind to have a small blue spot at the edge is it too late for a good HT? The grind is down to .8 mm.

2. Does it make sense to just make a boat load of practice grinds on whatever steel I can find before I spend money on a steel I can actually make a knife out of?

I thank you all in advance for your wisdom!

Zook.
 
You can always re- heat treat. Doesn't matter what you do before ht as long as you dont melt it.

1080 or 1084 is a good steel to start with if doing your own ht, although 1095 isnt bad either. (I understand the trick to 1095 is very short time from forge to quench). The steel comes anealed - that is soft - no ht. After grinding (mostly to complete) you quench for hardening and temper in the oven.

After heat treat (quench and temper) you finish grind / put the edge on. If you overheat it post ht, it will anneal and become soft requiring new heat treat.
 
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Thanks Dan. That gives me hope I didn't waste the whole piece of 1095. Since my purchase, I have learned that 1080 and 1084 are the steels for me at my level.
 
Happy I could help.

I'm just starting out too, but with my engineering background I have goodunderstanding of alloys and heat treat. I'm sure some experienced guys will chime in here soon.

From a ht perspective, I suspect your first attempt is salvageable. You can also send out for ht if you aren't confident or dont have the equipment yourself.

The bare bones basics are heated (to non-magnetic) and air cooled over time anneals (softens), heated and quenched hardens (very hard and brittle), and temper in the oven over a few hours reduces hardness to desired level. So you can re-heat treat overheated steel.
 
Use good steel and keep at it. Don't practice on junk steel. When you get one to turn out well but then you can't harden it at will be a bummer. Just keep using 1080 or something like that and you'll get better.
 
Use good steel, find something inexpensive and send it off for heat treat. 1095 is fine, just send it off for now.

Make each knife your very best. Spend as much time as possible to make it as perfect as you can.

To avoid overgrinding a knife and to make the finish nice try draw filing your bevels to straighten them up. Once everything is close on the grinder go to the file and then backed sandpaper to clean everything up. This takes more time to do than getting a nice finish off of the grinder but as you see it takes a lot of knives to learn the grinder. This way you can learn grinding and still have nice finished knives.

Blue edge before heat treat... no problem at all! Everything gets much hotter than that before critical temp is met during heat treat. Post heat treat this is an issue and generally means your edge is toast... with most steels you can re-do the heat treat.
 
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Thanks Guys! I think I will try to clean up the first try and finish the second one (the one with the blue spot). I appreciate the encouragement!
 
Well, it didn't go as planned. Screwed up some more steel. going to order some more and keep practicing!
 
Ok, so I am finding this a little more difficult than expected.
Click to expand...
Well, it didn't go as planned. Screwed up some more steel. going to order some more and keep practicing!
Click to expand...
No sh*t welcome to knife making. We will try to help you in this journey. Expect to have failures and triumphs. It's all good. Jess
 
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