Sean Couch 1095 Hunter Passaround Review

[TOB9595]

Thanks to Sean Couch for passin round his 1095 Hunter. Sean is quite a knifemaker.
Sean is Laredo7mm here on the Forum
For more info, reviews and pics Here's the passaeround thread

Here's Sean's pic. It shows the fine sweeping lines. The handle material is a beautiful burl.

It really fit my hand quite well

Thick tang and slabs while not being bulky in hand or sheath

The choil is a fine lock up for the hand......

BUT.....
The point of the blade at the choil was bothersome. I cut my finger most times till I took a fine stone to it and brought the slicing edge and point down a bit. Still mighty pointy and sharp.
Note the lovely burl and grind.

It came in a very well done leather sheath with the edge protector piece. It is a great piece of leathercraft.

I had my doubts about the length of the belt loop on the sheath.

I thought there would be too much flopping round. It didn't turn out that way. I had it sitting and the sheath just shifted and the blade was retained well. I wore it in my back, front pockets and outside the pocket. Comfy and retaining all the while.

Model is from GQ Magazine with permission
in Back pocket my preferred carry for FB

In front pocket

 

[TOB9595]

On belt

While this is not a rigid sheath it moved well to accomodate sitting without poking you in the ribs (or in my case a fat roll)

This is a nice thin blade that is stabby, cuts and slices well.

All right this is a mighty crummy pic...I may be developing (pun) a problem with focus on my cam...

I took pics of some shaving of bark and branches...all of which didn't come out or is identifiable.

When I was pulling the blade out of a tree....the very last time I had thrust ir in. I snapped the tip....
YIKES!!!!!!
Yes, I snapped it....

I wasn't trying to burrow a hole in the tree as it was in fairly deep and I musta twisted a bit. Not much pressure was exerted at this time.
I have no answer at the moment.
It's on the way to Sean for a checkup.

Wonderful knife and beautiful execution of design.
Cool knife
Tom

 

[DaveH]

knife abuser! I'm calling the SPCK on you!

Just teasin. It didn't llook like it was thrust in very deeply from your pix, it will be good to hear from Sean about it.

 

[Cliff Stamp]

Sean Couch for passin round his 1095 Hunter.

Nice looking Sharpfinger inspired blade. It looks like he left the edge decently fine. How does it cut?

I musta twisted a bit.

What is the expected hardness?

-Cliff

 

[Alpha Knife Supply]

I think the wood on the handle is amboyna burl.

 

[TOB9595]

Nice looking Sharpfinger inspired blade. It looks like he left the edge decently fine. How does it cut?


What is the expected hardness?

-Cliff

Cliff,
It sliced quite cleanly and well. I was able to get very thin shavings off of wood.

The Hardness, Sean is checking on his notes.....I spoke with Sean this morning.

Chuck
It is indeed amboyna burl.
A lovely wood.
Tom

 

[Cliff Stamp]

The hardness is critical, 1095 can have a wide range of properties, it gets very brittle at 65 HRC and would easily be broken with light to moderate twisting, I don't even think you could stab it into hard woods at that hardness. At lower levels though it get really tough, at ~ 58 HRC you can beat on it with a hammer and only dent up the face of the hammer. Temper according to usage and it make a very versatile, high performance steel.

-Cliff

 

[allenC]

Nice knife and pictures.

Cliff said it first; it looks like a Schrade Old Timer Sharpfinger.

Cheers,
Allen.

 

[Laredo7mm]

I checked my notes and she came out at 59 HRC. I also heat treated that one in my forge and not my molten salts so I will be interested to see what the fracture looks like. That should give me an indication on how refined I got my grain structure.

The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is that I do grind that style of knife pretty darn thin. She already has tooth to the edge coming off the grinder and can cut paper after hand sanding. All that is needed to get to hair popping sharp is a little honing with a fine stone. Plus add in the false eged to get her really pointy. All that is done to make her a good hunter/skinner slicer/dicer but will leave it a bit fragile.

I should be able to add more when I see it in person and then I can fix her up and send it back out. The hardest I have been able to get 1095 is about 62 to 63 HRC as quenched, so i am leaning more toward edge geometry than hardness.

More to come in the near future.

 

[Laredo7mm]

Oh yeah, definitely Amboyna. The scales on the pass around are mostly curl not burl, but the block she came off of had some fantastic burl to it. Take a look at the picture below. Same knife profile but with a whole bunch of burl action. The one below was Grandpa's 2003 Christmas gift. Man I love Amboyna!

 

[Cliff Stamp]

At that hardness, would you expect a set and decent flexibility to the blade.? When you taper them really thin, even the high carbon stainless can bend really far. I have broken some fine tips, and they flex really far, it definately isn't something you would do accidently on a twist.

-Cliff

 

[Laredo7mm]

At that hardness, would you expect a set and decent flexibility to the blade.? When you taper them really thin, even the high carbon stainless can bend really far. I have broken some fine tips, and they flex really far, it definately isn't something you would do accidently on a twist.

-Cliff

So basically you are telling my it was too hard? So can i send it to you for a hardness test, since my hardness tester seems to not be working well.

I am going to cross post over to the maker's forum and see if I can get some help from those guys on what they think might have happened.

It is all speculation right now.

 

[Cliff Stamp]

So basically you are telling my it was too hard?

I have 1095 blades that would likely break if I did that with them, they might even break on the stabbing even if I didn't twist them. The ones I have are definately too hard for that, but they are made for other things so they are not in general too hard, they are the right hardness for what they are intended to do.

Why it broke could be any number of reasons, hardness isn't 100% of steel properties, maybe you got a large aggregates at that point, check the grain on the break. I was asking you if you expected it to break given your heat treatment. I assumed you did flex tests on the steel among other things as you adjusted tempers to get the mix of properties you wanted.

-Cliff

 

[Laredo7mm]

I was yanking your chain Cliff. I can't wait to get if back either, just to look at the grain structure as I mentioned in my first post. Something odd may be going on, it is hard to say without the knife in hand.

but they are made for other things so they are not in general too hard, they are the right hardness for what they are intended to do.

I agree with that 100%.

 

[Cliff Stamp]

Yeah just be clear what you designed the knife to be used for, talk to the guy buying it if you get a chance. The more communication the better.

Really nice work in general, the way you used the pins in this one to complement the damascus blade pattern is very effective :

http://scknives.com/uploads/Kith_col.jpg

This one would make a nice camp knife with a small change to the guard :

http://scknives.com/uploads/sanmai_col.jpg

I really like the handle drop.

-Cliff

 

[John Andrews]

Stabbing that blade into wood would not be my choice of treatment. As we know, a piece of wood will vary within itself of hardness and grain. The wood grain itself may have torqued the point when the blade was trying to follow the grain and rings of that round wood. Damn nice knife, too. I re-ground a large Buck blade that a dummy threw and stuck into a tree, and then worked the blade SIDEWAYS to work the blade out. Yep, he snapped about an inch off, so I re-profiled it for him and it turned out looking pretty good, actually. I was tired of his crying, and he didn't feel worthy of sending it back to Buck. I had to agree with him, I would have felt guilty if I was him, too. No offense intended towards anyone here, I'm not saying your fine knife was abused or the blade failed.

 

[Cliff Stamp]

Stabbing that blade into wood would not be my choice of treatment. As we know, a piece of wood will vary within itself of hardness and grain. The wood grain itself may have torqued the point when the blade was trying to follow the grain and rings of that round wood.

Even if you intersect a knot this should not be an issue, unless as noted the 1095 is ran really hard, it should be fairly ductile when the hardness is less than 60 HRC, and the impact energy is far too low to cause direct fracture.

..threw and stuck into a tree, and then worked the blade SIDEWAYS to work the blade out. Yep, he snapped about an inch off...

That should not have happened, I have broken the tip off of a 119, it cracks easily if you pry with it, but you really have to bend it. You can work it out of a stab no problem. Even the high carbon stainless steels are not that brittle.

You can break them by throwing but you need to do it over and over, usually you will lose a tip when the throw goes really wrong and you end up with all the momentum of the knife going across a small section of tip a fraction of an inch long.

-Cliff

 

[Laredo7mm]

... it should be fairly ductile when the hardness is less than 60 HRC, and the impact energy is far too low to cause direct fracture...

Do you have any data to go with that statement? I would be intesested in seeing some T/Y/E and impact vs. hardness numbers that you have.

 

[Cliff Stamp]

I don't have the numbers for 1095 off hand, but I have used the steel and it gets retarded tough when the hardness drops. Ontario's for example, on the odd occasion that they get it right, show extreme ductility and toughness, this is in the mid to high fifties. Extreme meaning you can hit them with a hammer, bend to way beyond 45, etc. .

I have the numbers for a bunch of steels which I have done that with which are more brittle than 1095, D2 for example and they are really low like 8-10 ft.lbs. They also have little ductility at all as they show little to no set before breaking. I can't recall that ever breaking a knife actually, just the stabbing, I even did that with one of McClung's ceramic knives.

On thin knives as well, even with low ductility the flex is insane because as the steel gets thin there is less of a deviation between the radius of curvature of the inside and outer layers. Wilson for example can bend his S90V fillet knives at 59 HRC to 90 degrees as they are so thin.

Back to poking, I have even stabbed knives into concrete and it isn't trivial to get the tips to break, even with stainless ones with really pointy tips like the Deerhunter from A. G. Russell. Usually the tip bends and actually breaks from ductile failure as you are not right on 90 on the stab, you do get slight impaction on the first contact of course, ~mm or so.

And by stab I don't mean a light poke, I mean slamming the knife into the concrete enough so that you dig holes in it mm's in depth with every pass. I'll ask Alvin if he has any numbers for toughness/ductility of 1095 over a decent hardening range.

-Cliff

 

[Laredo7mm]

I also think blade geometry plays a big role. Fillet knives have a different cross section and are more flexable. The knife in questino here had a elongated diamond shape where it broke making it stiffer. The flase edge acting like stiffening ribs:

Here is another picture of a prototype balisong blade where I ground the tip thin but with no false grind and a very slight taper. 1095 blade at 59 HRC: