Stainless question...

D

dluxhvac

Joined
Jan 1, 2013
Messages
80
A good friend of mine passed away this past weekend. I want to make a small run of beer openers out of stainless and some home made mycarter handels out of some old t shirts of his for some of his close friends. My question is what would be a good stainless steel to use and would I really have to heat treat it? I have no experience with stainless and never made a beer opener. I have some n690 at home it's 4mm thick but still has scale on it I'm thinking it would be a lot easier to get some other stainless so that I don't have to grind away all that scale. Thanks in advance for all your help.
 
Sorry about your friends passing.

I don't know about what other non Martinistic steels would work? If your are winning to Heat treat it or to send it out. 440C is readily available an inexpensive,
 
I would have to send it out. I have no way of heat treating stainless. I have only worked with carbon steel.
 
So sorry for your loss. I assume you don't have the cryo chamber, to properly heat treat n690. Have you sent n690 out for heat treatment before? Do they force you to grind off all excess scale? Or can you wire wheel it, removing most of the scale. Cut it to the desired shape. Then send it for proper heat treat?

I don't know how soft SS is before heat treat. But I wonder if you could fudge the cryo step. And still end up having a good bottle opener. As a suggestion, take it or leave it. If you were to drill holes & peen to plates together. And cut your design out. I bet you might end up having a strong, good looking opener.

Something like a safer key chail bottle opener. Just a pic for thought.


I found some information on the n690. I'll provide a few links, though I doubt they will be much help.
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/753098-Bohler-Uddeholm-Blade-Steels
http://www.bucorp.com/knives.htm
 
Last edited:
410 and 416 stainless are hardenable to about hrc 43-45, I wonder if that would be hard enough for an application like this? The HT is as simple as it gets for stainless so he might be able to source the HT locally or from a nearby maker and the cost might be less than using blade steel.
 
I have a blown propane ht oven it gets up to about 900 Celsius max. That's why I never tried to ht stainless.
 
Fellas, you can make perfectly sturdy bottle openers out of mild steel, there is no need to heat treat. I would personally go with 303 Stainless just because it's easy to machine and doesn't need to be heat treated to be corrosion resistant.
 
I was actually just working on something like that for funsies. I make a lot of bottle openers for my university club:
RaobQG0.jpg


I was thinking of banging out some mild steel + nickel damascus and machining some out as thanks for the blacksmithing instructors at my university


pnh7Oj9.png


Definitely need to make some soft jaws to machine both sides, and it's a lot more wasteful than just forging them out though!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top