Newbie with a question.

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krank1450

Joined
Mar 1, 2014
Messages
5
Hello all,
I have been looking at this site for a few months now and have been wanting to get started in knife making. I a have been reading as much as i can on here and am just starting to draw some knives up. i am going to wait a little while longer before i start to make one. i have read that it is better to take your time and design a bunch before just jumping in. i just purchased step by step knife making,The wonder of knife making and $50knife shop to read and gain more knowledge. I will be grinding my knives not forging. Anyway enuff babble, the question i had was i have not seen anyone use a plasma to cut out the knife blanks. does the heat change the metal and make it unusable. I have a plasma and it seems like it would be a good way to cut them out.

Thanks for all of the info on this site.

sorry if this is the wrong forum.
 
Not the wrong forum at all...no need to apologize! Welcome! Sure, you can use plasma to cut the blanks out. The heat won't hurt the steel, because it will be heat treated later. Let me clarify that. Some steels using a plasma cutter it might be a problem. A2 or air hardening steels, they might just harden along the edge. If you are using simple carbon steels like 1084 or O1 and the like...I don't think that will be a problem at all. Just make sure they are normalized before heat treating (bring up to 100F past critical and air cool).

As for taking your time to design a bunch of knives before jumping in..... I don't buy that. Take your time to design ONE knife VERY well, and then jump in with KNOWN steel that you can heat treat. 1084 is THE steel to learn on.

How about that plasma cutting, guys? I have never used plasma cutting. Would it harden air hardening steels along that edge?
 
the plasma will burn the steel near the cut

You have to cut oversized to allow grinding that damaged steel away.

How much ?
who knows, start with 1/16 and see if that works.
 
I remember reading somewhere that a plasma cutter could actually "burn" the carbon out of steel. I don't know if that's bull or not, but from my understanding plasma is about 30,000 degree's at it's lowest temp, that seems like it could do some damage to the actual steel to me. Then again this is stuff I read "somewhere" last year or earlier, so I don't really know.

Used to use plasma to cut out my blanks when I was using scrap 1040 sheet steel to practice just shaping knives, but I wasn't very good.
 
Plasma or laser, there is a thin area of HAZ - Heat Affected Zone - along the cut. Most people leave about .050" extra for grinding that part away in the final profiling.
 
Krank1450, The book is a good starting place but consider buying a piece of grinding equipment so that you don't get discouraged and give the ideas up. Larry
 
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