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saw mill bandsaw blade steel
- Thread starter Caudill
- Start date
I'm not sure what a "saw mill" bandsaw is. I know I've tried making knives out of regular industrial band saw blades and I found out they were zone hardened. Only the teeth were very hard. They made better knives than mild steel but a file would bite into them.
Relevant to this, there's a guy out there who makes fixed blade knives from new DeWalt "Search and Rescue" reciprocal saw blades. Very tough stuff---made to saw through concrete, conduit, cables, buildings, trains, etc. I think his main biz is forging survival spear heads and things like that.
He makes the edge extremely sharp but the knife is pretty basic in three different grades: Plain, with the yellow and black paint and "Dewalt" logo still on them; grade 1, with all paint stripped to bare metal and blued; and grade 2, paint stripped, coated blade with a wingwalker sand textured handle dip. As I recall all have the new saw teeth remaining along what forms the spine.
Very novel and seem like they'd be pretty cool. If I can find my bookmark for the guy in the next few days I'll come back and post it. I've wanted to get one for a couple years now but haven't. You might be able to find him w/ a Google search..... really worth at least checking out.
He makes the edge extremely sharp but the knife is pretty basic in three different grades: Plain, with the yellow and black paint and "Dewalt" logo still on them; grade 1, with all paint stripped to bare metal and blued; and grade 2, paint stripped, coated blade with a wingwalker sand textured handle dip. As I recall all have the new saw teeth remaining along what forms the spine.
Very novel and seem like they'd be pretty cool. If I can find my bookmark for the guy in the next few days I'll come back and post it. I've wanted to get one for a couple years now but haven't. You might be able to find him w/ a Google search..... really worth at least checking out.
There is a lot of scrap steel available that is suitable for knives, I'm guessing mostly it is below 1095. I've read about people forging knives from lots of different things. We worry about our knives breaking, chipping, dulling, etc., but look at the tools in your garage that you beat the crap out of and they still work just fine. I've got screwdrivers, pry bars, wood chisels that I have hammered on mercilessly and they just dull a little bit, never break. A band saw blade might be similar steel but I've seen thin saw blades of that type break enough to think that they might be heat treated to a higher level than a screwdriver is.
I've watched those "how it's made" shows and sometimes they show saw blades being made. They heat treat the teeth with induction heating that heat treats a single blade pretty quickly. I don't know if their goal is to not heat treat the rest of the blade or if their efficient manufacturing process just works out that way. If you are making a knife from a saw blade you would have to count on doing a new heat treat on it.
I've watched those "how it's made" shows and sometimes they show saw blades being made. They heat treat the teeth with induction heating that heat treats a single blade pretty quickly. I don't know if their goal is to not heat treat the rest of the blade or if their efficient manufacturing process just works out that way. If you are making a knife from a saw blade you would have to count on doing a new heat treat on it.
