Rebar and bone.....

Raymond Richard

Raymond Richard

Joined
Jun 17, 2001
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Spent yesterday working on this one. The blade is 60 GRADE rebar, it's 5 3/4" and over all 10 3/4". The handle is deer leg bone I processed last year and the fitting on this one are 1018 and a wrought iron butt nut. Yes, 60 Grade rebar has enough carbon in it to harden up just fine....
PDRM0541.JPG
 
Now that is the style of knife that really does it for me.

Good size. Nice belly but not too much, good point for detail work. The deer leg bone handle is the right size for the blade...the lines flow. nice color on the bone. I like that the ring on the end is small and barely noticable.

Very nice.
 
Nice piece. We have the same rebar here and have had great result making knives out of it. It has a high tensile strength. Cheesel get 1 1/2" thick and his frim call it Dewydag (Spelling??) We have been trying to get the composition of it, with no luck.
 
Tom, I appreciate your comments!

As for the bone having color, it had been dyed but I find the bone at least for me the color that I add to it is mainly just surface. The bone is just to dense for it to penitrate.

George, I've done well over a 100 knives out of the 60 grade rebar and they have all hardened up just fine. As for other alloys there all in there. At one time I had a spec sheet and it had the cabon at .25% which I believe to way off. I'm thinking .60 but thats just judging from the spark. Its the only steel I've used that I can get hard in any quench. Just wish I could find it in flat stock. Thats alot of hand banging for me but if it wasn't for the rebar I would know alot less about forging a blade to shape using flat stock......
 
Raymond Richard...


Very interesting idea....I never thought of rebar......


Now I see tons of rebar around my job all the time,,,its always in the way,,,I spend lots of time just getting rid of the stuff so I can work,,,,I think it would be cool to make a knife out of such stuff..

But how to know it will work?

when I saw you post, I had a drive by the job site and picked up some rebar,,,,it's about 1 inch thick, and about 2 foot long.

I thought it would be great for my forge to try out,,,,But how do I know it will harden before I take all the time to forge it to shape, then harden?

Is there a type of test that will work before I spend the time and gas for my forge, to learn if the rebar is the correct type to make into a knife?
 
Normally there is a 60 that should be on the bar but here is a pretty easy test to see if it will harden up for you. Just bring it up to non magnetic and stick it in water till it has cooled off. Check it with a file before and after you do that you should be able to tell a difference in the hardness. 1" is a bear to forge by hand but its do able. Another test you could do is heat it up again and quench and then hit it with a hammer and if it breaks off it is hard. I'd get some smaller rebar to try that with thinking the 1" will be real tuff to try and break because of the size. The knife in the picture came from 6 bar (3/4") in diameter. I find 1/2, 5/8, and 3/4 are the sizes I prefer. 3/8 works fine for smaller blades....

BTW, The rebar that I used on this knife came to me via Bruce Evans....
 
Ray, on the stuff that you are using, does it have flat sides???? The standard rebar have a thread like appearances.
 
Nice knife there, Ray! I never did think of using deer bone in that way, but it does make sense. You say its very dense and won't take color? Hmm... maybe some sort of acetone bath then some dark rust color might work?
 
that is a really nice knife, is that a hamon i see there? :D do you have a close up of the fittings? is the guard just one piece or more? i have made a couple from 60 grade rebar i have gotten at lowes and they also seemed to harden well, they have 1/2" and 5/8" there, but you have to look for the 60 on it, they also mix in the 40 grade, to them it is all just rebar, so i only get pieces with the 60 on it, you can get a 3 ft piece for i think 95 cents :D
 
Rebar dimensions are given in 1/8" intervals - #4 =4x1/8"-1/2" ,#6= 6x1/8" =3/4" etc.
 
Hey thanks for the Lowes tip! I've been trying to find some bridge work going on where I can pull off the road to talk to a super, but all the work I see happening is on divided highway. Nice to know where I might find some, I've been itching to hammer something out ever since I first saw one Richard had made. (I've forged one knife so far, and you guys ain't gonna see it. :rolleyes: ;) )

Nice knife Richard, it has all the right lines. I like the way there's no plunge, that just looks and "feels" natural somehow. Very cool, thanks for sharing.
 
I got to handle this one today at the OKCA show! The picture does not do it justice, and it looks great in the picture.
 
Gutshot, Thanks for the kind words about the knife. My patients for taking pictures doesn't go to far.

George, Not exactly understanding what you are saying about the flats on the rebar? Think your talking about the ridges on the out side of it. If thats the case it just means it came from a different steel mill.

Mete, never knew about the deer bone being so much denser than cow.

I've got a busy day ahead of me, I'm sure I left something out so if I did let me know..... Thanks you guys!
 
Dense deer bones - yes but it makes sense they need denser bones because they do jump around alot ,like 20 foot jumps . But even with dense bones they still break legs occasionally.........I wonder what the chemistry of rebar is . The ASTM specs deal only with strength. You might find different mills making it with different chemistry.
 
Mete, I'm sure there really isn't nothing consitent as far as alloys go. I've used 60 grade rebar for blades over several years off a number of different jobs. The carbon content at least to me is the most important and I'm sure it does very but never enough that the blades won't harden properly. The first few times I made blades out of it I had them tested for hardness. I had them check at the ricasso area that was at least 1/4" thick and it was at a 54Rc but the thinner the steel the harder it would be....

Higgen's, The bone will dye but not much penitration. The bone on this knife was dyed in alcahol that was loaded with Rite dye that was heated up. After sanding and some shaping it had lost most the color.

Terry, Yes you are seeing a hamon. I did a clay treatment before I quenched it.

George, Alot of the really old rebar was made square and not round....
 
Beautiful knife!

How did you process your deer bone? There's certainly no shortage of it around here, might as well put some to good use.
 
Clean up the bone by boiling it in water with a strong solution of TSP. Bleach will work just as well. You'll need to cut the bone in half so the marrow will come out. There's this type of beetle called dermestid beetle thats suppossed to be really good at cleaning up the bone. The big plus with the beetle is that after the bone is cleaned by this bug the grease is gone. Here's a link to this critter: http://www.skulltaxidermy.com/
 
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