New Vs Old R.c. Hardness

[T-BAG]

I have a question......?........

I know that Diamond Blade has new Friction Forged Blades where the hamon is a R.C. hardness of 65-67 and it seems to be the best thing since sliced bread.

Yesterday I just read in a Knife magazine/catalog where the Japanese have been making a White Steel High Carbon water hardened tool steel that has a R.C of 64-66 and they sandwich it between layers of Damascus for a really tough knife......AND.....this is a big and...They have been doing this for 700 years.

Has Diamond Blade figured out a completely different process or is it the same process but speeded up...As in man made diamonds are just as hard as real diamonds but we didn't have to wait 5,000 years for the pressure to squeeze carbon to diamond. Just curious.

 

[beluga]

I am a bit skeptical about the 66-67 RC hardness. I'm not too sure it's a good thing to have an edge with this kind of hardness because it can cause the edge to be too brittle. I believe that the japanese swords's edge are considered ideal when the hardness is around 62 RC.

 

[mr.trooper]

whoopty freeking doo.

The ability to harden high carbon steels to 66+ HRC is nothing new, and its not special to the Japaneses. The reason nobody does it is because its a stupid idea. Such a blade would be as brittle as obsidian, and impossible to sharpen.

Laminating it would relieve some of the brittleness issues, but i still don't see it being all that tough.

 

[knarfeng]

I have a question......?........

I know that Diamond Blade has new Friction Forged Blades where the hamon is a R.C. hardness of 65-67 and it seems to be the best thing since sliced bread.

Yesterday I just read in a Knife magazine/catalog where the Japanese have been making a White Steel High Carbon water hardened tool steel that has a R.C of 64-66 and they sandwich it between layers of Damascus for a really tough knife......AND.....this is a big and...They have been doing this for 700 years.

Has Diamond Blade figured out a completely different process or is it the same process but speeded up...As in man made diamonds are just as hard as real diamonds but we didn't have to wait 5,000 years for the pressure to squeeze carbon to diamond. Just curious.

The friction forged method is new. They claim (and the user reports that I have read support that claim) that in the friction forging process the large carbides normally found in D2 are fractured and that the final grain structure is very fine. The fine grain structure with the small carbides would mean you could get a VERY fine edge on the blade. The carbides would provide excellent edge retension.

Mr. Trooper is correct. It is quite possible to get hardnesses in the mid '60s from carbon and alloy steels. But it is not merely hardness that is apparently at work in the Diamond Blade products. It is high hardness combined with fine grain structure and lots of small carbides. I don't think I would want to chop with the friction forged stuff. But I would guess that the edge retension would be superior to that obtained from the 700 year old Japanese process which would produce similar hardness, but not the other factors in the alloy.