Re-hardening production blade

S

Silverbullet951

Joined
May 16, 2009
Messages
94
Hi everyone,

I've become interested in older fixed blade knives and wanted to do a restoration on one for a while. My plan was to take a solid but worn/neglected blade such as a beat up Cattaraugus 225Q and turn it into a beautiful high performance knife (new leather washers, polished guard/buttcap). While I am at it I'd like to improve the performance of the actual blade since older ones are known to be quite low in RC hardness and often have hard/soft spots. That seems pretty evident in how so many old Marbles and others have seriously worn areas where its been sharpened so many times. Also, I was planning to use one of the many that are already missing handles and relatively useless, not damage a good collectable.

So my question, is there any reason why you couldn't have an older 1095 or similar blade annealed and re-hardened to a higher RC? I'd love to have an original traditional blade that had today's edgeholding and toughness, say around 58 RC. The plan was to clean the blade up and send it to Peter's or another company for heat treating. Possible?

Thanks!
Josh
 
Interesting project. I'm outside the box, but I think it could be done. You'd have some decarb/surface finish issues after heat treat, so you'd end up with a little smaller blade than you start with, if you're going to polish it out. I doubt Peters would mess with it, but you should ask them. Sounds more like a garage knifemaker project... I bet you could find another knifemaker to HT it.
 
Having seen some documentaries of some of the old high volume cutlers it seems reasonable to me that you could improve the heat treat considerably. Some of those manufacturers gave little consideration to grain refinement, even austenitizing temperatures, quality of quench and temperature control during finial finishing and sharpening to maintain temper. I'll bet you could improve one by quite a bit.

Cool project. :thumbup:
 
Thanks guys! Nathan, that's exactly what I was thinking/hoping. I know companies like Rowen and others have made substantial gains with many of the old-school steels like 1095. The Cattaraugus' original specs state that is was indeed 1095, so hopefully it will work out. I'd think the edgeholding difference between RC 50-53 and say 59 would be huge. My plan is to also round out the tang and blade junction a bit too for toughness, as it seems most tangs from that era had sharp 90 degree junctions that are a weakspot.

First I gotta find the right one...
 
I have a 225Q that I reground to convex, rehandled it in Maple using the mortised tang method (original handle was too short for my liking). It holds an edge very well, and doesn't chip out during battoning or light chopping. I've cut through 3" diameter tug boat rope that was full of sand and crushed oyster shells, and only retouched the edge on a leather strop to get back to shaving sharp. The heat treat on mine seems very good.

Your blade may vary from the one I have, but I'd put yours through some cutting tests before you decide whether or not the heat treat should be redone.
 
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