Planer Blades

[Disco Stu]

A friend of mine gave me a planer blade today with "Wisconsin Knife Works" on it. I went to their website and it looks to me like they make them out of M-2 or D-2. Any tip on making a knife out of this thing?

 

[Eric M Ericson]

if you score them deeply on both sides, They break right on the mark. (I usualy push them into the corner of a high speed grinder wheel to score them)


I generaly use a stick tang. Your material goes a lot farther, and you do alot less grinding if you cut the blade off 1 inch into the handle and brase on a tang.

you probobly won't be able to aneal them so you'l be grinding them hard. the good news is if they get a little hot you're not going to hurt them.
(the anealing cycle runs something like this.
heat to 2200 deg hold at temp one hour.
decrease temp 5 degrees per hour untill 1200 deg. allow to cool)

then grind your profile and put a handle on it.

you'll like the way they hold an edge, but they'er a pain to sharpen.

 

[Kid Couteau]

I use planer blades and what I have found works some is to place them in your oven on broil for 3-4 hours and then turn off the oven and let them cool slowly. you wont be able to drill them but it softens them up a bit. I made a throwing knife out of one and the guy I made it for has thrown it over 150 times and no break.

Knifesmith

 

[Frank Niro]

I got very involved in using planer blades to make knives many years ago. Here are a few notes. Several brands have a carbon content of close to .85%. The chrome content is usually 12%. They are metal that is considered to be one of the many types of D2 but with that % of carbon are not in the near quality for edge holding as the D2 that is sold for knife making by many knife making suppliers. They will in fact (as they are) make a knife that has edge holding about 25% less than ATS-34 that is properly heat and freeze treated. Perhaps the worst quality about planer blades is that the are brittle and hard to sharpen. They will grind about the same as hardened 440-C, which means that a good belt grinder can be used to do a good work on them. You can drill holes in this steel with good quality masonary bits which will drill oversized holes or you can use silicon carbide bits that can be had to drill very accurate holes. This material(the hardened planer blades) may be still available with no edge in a 3/32X2"x24". I found a good way to start on cutting out a blade pattern was to use a cut off saw blade in a skill saw ( all metal or you may melt the housing) and then go to the belt grinder. If you are really desparate you can use a regular stone wheel grinder prferably whith a soft type wheel and then lots and lots and lots of hand work with coarse to fine sandpaper. Planer blades have never been made of M1 orM2 which has no or next to no chrome and therefore would rust almost imediately especially those used in planer mill operations. I hope this has been helpfull and If you think I could help further just ask. Before been able to get steels like 440-C, ATS-34,D2, and being able to get proper heat treating I made many hunting knives with the planer blades used for planer mills. No they weren't as good as knives made from the more prefered steels but I still tried to make a quality product and many people appreciated something that was still far better than factory knives for edge holding back then. Regards Frank.

 

[Disco Stu]

Thanks for the info guys. Eric, I cut off a piece before posting and that's exactly how I did it. I thought my arm was going to fall off when it snapped. That ****'s hard. I was going to score it with a new file but it wouldn't cut in at all. Figures. The planer blade is probably harder than the file. Glad I did some research before sticking it in the forge.