Question about finishing steels

mike finder

mike finder

Joined
Mar 26, 2018
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I have been making knives for a few months now and a few people are starting to become interested in buying a knife or two from me. I am going to send out the steel for heat treat, so I was thinking about going with d2. However I heard it is a beast to hand sand after HT and that is the only way I've been able to get a satisfactory finish so far. Are there any stainless or semi stainless that might be easier to finish after HT but still have an awesome reputation?

Do we have a resource here that talks about the difficulty of finishing of different steels? I've only used 1095 1084 and 80crv2 and they're cake to finish (Still takes a few hours though)
 
You can finish air hardening steels before HT especially if you're sending them somewhere they'll be heat treated in a vacuum furnace. They will still require some sanding after but sending them with an 800 grit finish you can clean them up again with 800 grit when they come back. No scale, no decarb, just discolored. As for a finishing resource, yes. The spec sheet. The more tungsten, niobium, or vanadium, the more they suck. You can pretty much rank them by that, in my experience.
 
D2 is a semi Stainless.. Carbon Steel is pretty much always easier to finish.. Stainless is more work but worth it in my book.. Try Cm-154 or AEB-L.. the last is what I use mostly and is fairly easy to finish & takes a Razor edge and holds it at 60-62 Rockwell...
 
Ease in finishing generally correlates inversely with wear resistance, ignoring other potential factors like impurities, etc. Some alloy types are also reported to be more difficult to finish like vanadium alloyed steels, which is generally attributed to the vanadium carbides being harder than many abrasives. D2 is in a similar wear resistance category to stainless steels and has a coarse carbide structure. CPM-154 and AEB-L are both reports to be easy to finish as was pointed out by Laurence above.
 
How does aeb-l stand up to a bit of abuse? The knives would either be drop point hunters or everyday carry fixed work knives for construction workers and from what I've read about aebl it is great for kitchen work
 
mike finder said:
How does aeb-l stand up to a bit of abuse? The knives would either be drop point hunters or everyday carry fixed work knives for construction workers and from what I've read about aebl it is great for kitchen work
Click to expand...
It stands up very well.
toughness-summary.jpg
 
AEB-L is really tough, I tested a bunch (and make a lot of knives from it) and am very impressed. It performs a lot like a carbon steel. It is super easy to grind and finish. I grind all of it hardened.

You can get an awesome finish on D2 easily. If you see orangepeeling you are not using sharp enough belts. Use ceramic belts to define shape then switch to 3M "gator" (trizact cf) belts to finish. Try something like 80 ceramic to a 160 gator then 100 gator to a few passes on a fine scorchbrite belt. Touch up your flats with the 100 belt after the scotchbrite belt. This will give you a nice satin finish that is pretty quick, easy and relatively inexpensive to pull off.

For strictly hand finishing W2 is really nice to work with and can sell for a high price. It is also a performer! I'd stay away from very much alloying if you are going to primarily hand finish and want to do things with efficiency.
 
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Thanks guys I've been eyeing aebl for awhile now, I'm probably going to try it out see how some people like it.
I want to try w2 for the hamon as well, I made a camp knife out of 1084 with a hamon and I love the pattern but it isn'
As vibrant as it would be in a w2 blade.

Only reason hand finishing is the only satisfactory way I can finish is a bit of inexperience on the grinder, my 2x72 doesn' have a vfd setup yet and a small mistake gets out of hand rather quickly and I would feel horribly letting a knife out of my shop even with a small blemish.
 
As another new maker I'm going though some of the same questions. I have tried AEB-L at about 62 Rc and it finishes about like your carbon steel. I think I noticed a bit of difference grinding it compared to 1084 but just different not harder. Unless your friends are super into knives and are great at sharpening I think AEB-L is probably perfect for most people . If you talk to a lot of people they have a huge issue with stainless and want carbon steel because they can sharpen it. If I look back I realize how many problems I had sharpening with Arkansas stones and until I got the right equipment some steels really sucked.

Personally I have done well with the trizacs and running them at full speed and just using a light touch . A diamond dressing to can bring back the cutting surface .
 
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