Odd Knife Materials

V

Vicarious Reality

Joined
Apr 9, 2008
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I thought of this thread while looking at my hard chromed abloy lock
Is it possible to hard chrome a knife? Would that mess up the heat treat?

Also, could you make a knife out of pure chromium?
I often think of using tungsten for a blade but chrome is about as hard and thusly would probably hold a decent edge

What are your thoughts about this or other materials
 
I suppose SM100, Beta Ti, and Titanium with a carbidized edge are a little strange.
 
Yes it is possible, although ceramic coatings are 10-15 points harder in the Rockwell C scale than hard chrome. So for coating a knife DLC, ceramic, and tungsten coatings would be better.

As far as making a knife from pure chromium. I dunno, seems like a good way to lighten your wallet more than anything else.
 
Mad Dogs are hard chromed, and no it doesn't mess up the heat treat.

The rest of that stuff, I have no idea.

For the record, I think oosic is about as odd as it gets.... Use your google-fu if you don't know what it is!
 
AntDog said:
Mad Dogs are hard chromed, and no it doesn't mess up the heat treat.

The rest of that stuff, I have no idea.

For the record, I think oosic is about as odd as it gets.... Use your google-fu if you don't know what it is!
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Interesting... i will check their website

lol, someone made a boner knife?
 
Böker made a line of knives out of sintered titanium, primarily made of titanium and ceramic, with various alloying compounds.

I would say a chromium blade would be bad, though. Something like a tungsten carbide blade can be done, though. There are also blades made of a cobalt based alloy, I think even just straight cobalt. There are also of course ceramic blades.
 
If you chrome plated a knife blade what would you do when it dulled? You would sharpen the plating off.

Cheap knife steels use chrome plating for the hardness. When the chrome wears off they are trash. Since a knife edge is so much finer that would happen more quickly.
 
davek14 said:
If you chrome plated a knife blade what would you do when it dulled? You would sharpen the plating off.

Cheap knife steels use chrome plating for the hardness. When the chrome wears off they are trash. Since a knife edge is so much finer that would happen more quickly.
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Chrome seems like just another way to hide a poorly finished blade.

The coolest "weird" handle material that I have seen lately was cast aluminum scales with some kind of blue dye. It looked unreal.
 
davek14 said:
If you chrome plated a knife blade what would you do when it dulled? You would sharpen the plating off.

Cheap knife steels use chrome plating for the hardness. When the chrome wears off they are trash. Since a knife edge is so much finer that would happen more quickly.
Click to expand...

When it dulls, you sharpen it. If you scratch the chrome it will take on scratches (same as any other blade finish), but it will not flake off if it was applied correctly.

Mad Dog knives are done this way. Blade is ground, heat treated, chrome applied, then the final edge put on. Yes it does take the chrome off the edge, so you have to protect the edge from corrosion. But the coating doesn't flake off of the blade.

Cheap knife steels use chrome plating for the hardness? I have never, ever seen a cheap knife with a chrome plated blade. Maybe I've just never been on the lookout for them? Who knows. Mind referring me to a few examples? I'd be curious to see them.
 
AntDog said:
When it dulls, you sharpen it. If you scratch the chrome it will take on scratches (same as any other blade finish), but it will not flake off if it was applied correctly.

Mad Dog knives are done this way. Blade is ground, heat treated, chrome applied, then the final edge put on. Yes it does take the chrome off the edge, so you have to protect the edge from corrosion. But the coating doesn't flake off of the blade.

Cheap knife steels use chrome plating for the hardness? I have never, ever seen a cheap knife with a chrome plated blade. Maybe I've just never been on the lookout for them? Who knows. Mind referring me to a few examples? I'd be curious to see them.
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Re-reading that, I did not say it as well as I may have. :rolleyes: I meant knife steels as in the steel you use to re-align the edge on a kitchen knife. Older steels are very hard steel whereas newer (cheap) ones are a soft metal chrome plated. Chrome *is* quite hard but it's only a few thousanths thick.

I thought that in the OP he was talking about chrome plating for the hardness. If you remove it from the edge you don't get that hardness there.
 
There is a big difference between the type of chrome you polish and the industrial chrome used for wear resistance
 
RevDevil said:
Don't forget about Google Chrome. :)
I think the old school Emerson knives were hard chromed too.
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Yes indeed! Good call RevDevil. I had forgot about those. I like that hard chrome coating too. Looks great as it wears. The bevels get shinier than the rest of the blade.
 
nwmetalbug said:
There is a big difference between the type of chrome you polish and the industrial chrome used for wear resistance
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I did not know that.

Holy ravioli, if you google "chrome" you definitely have to put a "-google" in there to get away from Google Chrome within a couple pages. No conflict of interest there. ;)

If the web slowed down for a minute I googled google.
 
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