Hi everyone, first off I would like to do a little background on myself. I am 29 years old and a family man. I work at a metallurgical factory. I have worked in production, in maintenance, and also briefly in the machine shop. For hobbies I started out reclaiming/restoring furniture and moved on to building furniture. I started dabbling in wood carving about 6 months ago using my "old timer" knife. That is where my interest in knife making got started. I wanted to make some carving knives so I bought some 1/8" 1095 steel to start. Then I started reading and decided to go with some 01 steel and do a simple knife for my first try since I am using all hand tools for the job. So I have my knife well under way I am to the point of needing to heat treat the blade. I want to do everything myself so I don't want to send it out. So here is one of many questions, is a coffee can forge better or worse than a brake drum forge? Or is there another option comparable in price to make and use? My blade edge thickness is .0325 is that an ok thickness for heat treat?
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New to knife making.
- Thread starter townerj86
- Start date
- Joined
- Jul 31, 2015
- Messages
- 3,118
I think it's easier to control heat with gas vs charcoal, so I say coffee can forge
Ok thanks. I wasn't sure if the coffee can forge would heat evenly.
For carving by hand a 1/16" thickness blade works very well , 1/8" is too thick except for heavy hogging .
It's easy to heat treat a 1/16" carbon steel blade with just a propane torch . I made a few small Indian crooked knives that have a single bevel and they work great for spoon carving . the blades are only 3 " long with 1" of that being the tang , they are short but work well on spoons. The steel curled on the flat side from the quench which makes the knife squeal on bigger pieces of wood , probably should have flattened that out on the grinder , cut's like hell though.
Pretty good tutorial here for simple knives of carbon steel , http://primitiveways.com/pt-knives-1.html
It's easy to heat treat a 1/16" carbon steel blade with just a propane torch . I made a few small Indian crooked knives that have a single bevel and they work great for spoon carving . the blades are only 3 " long with 1" of that being the tang , they are short but work well on spoons. The steel curled on the flat side from the quench which makes the knife squeal on bigger pieces of wood , probably should have flattened that out on the grinder , cut's like hell though.
Pretty good tutorial here for simple knives of carbon steel , http://primitiveways.com/pt-knives-1.html