- Joined
- Dec 5, 2005
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- 26,488
this knife has the same .125"/3mm A2, but the blade is 8"/200mm long- so a couple inches longer. The handle will be held on with 3 pins, and the material is olive green terotuf laminated to safety orange G10. It will be significantly thicker that the other one, and my goal with the handle is for it to be just heavy enough to balance the knife when the knife is used in a pinch grip.
A2 stains like O1 or other simple high carbon steels, even though it contains about 5% chromium. From what I understand, that chromium consumes carbon voraciously and lives on as carbides with almost no chromium left in solution. The thing that makes A2 awesome is its hardenability, meaning it will harden at room temperature- no need for messy oil. Another bonus is that the knife can be wrapped so as to minimize oxygen around it during austenitizing, which loses you precious carbon and leaves more clean up. So, you can really go to town before hardening because you know that most of the detailed work will need very little cleanup post heat treatment. I went a little too far into town with this knife by removing a little too much from the bevels, so the edge has a bit of a kink in it and overall there's a bit of a wow to it. Fortunately, the nicely crowned spine shows this curvature very clearly! I may temper it again in clamps and see if I can get it dead nuts. Or maybe I have other shit to do which is a better use of my time? I guess we'll see.
I know that a lot of people like knives that they know will work, but in many cases they'll never really find out for themselves. That's cool, I mean, do you really want to be in an actual situation where you can find out how well a dagger works?
I want to make knives that I like to use, and I also like to make knives that I think will work for something that I may never really be able to, (or want to) fully test. Kitchen knives are cool, because they ostensibly serve the primary function of nourishing humans and sustaining life, (forget the stats which show the main kind of knife used in violent crimes) and can elevate a person's interest in what they consume. We don't eat out, really ever, and especially these days. Our family spends a lot of time in the kitchen, and we grow some food too. Using a good kitchen knife is really a joyful experience, for me at least, and I like the idea that the knives that I make and design bring people who use them a little joy, or at least get them out of a bind so they can get back to enjoying themselves!
Now that Magnacut exists, I'm super stoked on getting something kitchen related in the hopper at CPKHQ. It may look like this, it may look very different. I have an acquaintance who is quite a well respected chef who I talked to in the past about getting some professional feedback, and I'm excited to finish this knife so I can leave it with him for a couple of weeks to see how he likes it.
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