Spring state of Stainless Steel

[600]

Is it possible to bring stainless steel, forexample CPM 154CM/RWL34, into a "springy" state through heat treatment?

The piece is a 0.157" thick folding knife scale. I originally wanted to post this in the sub knife makers but couldn't post anything there.

 

[mete]

Springs usually run in the low 50s HRc so you can just harden and temper back to that hardness. You can also buy 301 SS work hardened to that range .301 cannot be heat treated but buying 301 FULL HARD it's ready to go. It works fine ,I've used it specifically for springs !!

 

[600]

Great. I plan to use it as framelock.

 

[bdmicarta]

"spring steel" is not really a thing- steel is steel and virtually all of it has the same modulus of elasticity (springiness). Of course a spring also has to have enough strength that it can be bent/flexed/compressed without yielding it. Carbon steel and stainless steel can both be made to do this, and there are plenty of stainless steel springs used for various types of devices.

If you are going to use 0.157" thick steel scale as a RIL then you need some modification to allow it to deform them correct amount- you may have noticed that most frame-lock knives have cutouts somewhere that reduce the thickness of the scale and let it flex without yielding. If you are trying to design a scale to deflect something like 1/16" to function as a lock then material thickness, modulus of elasticity, resulting bending stress and unlocking force are all interrelated and you have to fine tune the full geometry to get all of that to work. (Getting into the realm of structural engineering analysis there.)

 

[600]

Yes thats right. My inspiration platform is CRKT S2 and ZT0095. They, or virtually all framelocks haves these cut outs to.