Steel question

[skippyW]

Hi. I am not a knife maker but I am guessing that this is the right place to ask. I ran across a knife maker on the web called Sage Blades. He makes some knives forged from a "chrome vanadium 3/4 wrench". What conventional blade steel would this be comparable to?
Just curious. Thanks

 

[immolatus]

I'm not a knife maker iether but the most obviouse (I suppose) compairison would be Ka-Bar's 1095 Cro-Van. 1065-1095 high carbon are typical tool steels and you can guess what the Cro-Van stands for. In terms of "conventional" steel for blade stock...you can find metal files and chisles that are 1095 in most hardware stores.
Hope this helps.

 

[mete]

I doubt that it's a blade steel. Blade steels usually have high carbon content .This is needed for a knife but not a wrench.

 

[quint]

He looks like a very talented artist for sure and a good Bladesmith. Looking at his work it seems that he usually uses O1 tool steel. He is calling his wrench forged knives a tool steel but who knows really. Maybe he did find some that were good quality and thus better steel but that is always a guessing game. Not to mention you have to be careful of the chrome plating many tools are coated with. This can be bad stuff.

If you are going to get into bladesmithing do some more reading and research. Start with simple cheap steel like 1084 which can be heat treated easily, forges easily compared to most tool steels. Oh and makes a great knife as well. Other ones for forging that I would recommend are aldo's 80crv2 which forges like 1084, maybe O1, W1 or W2. W1 can be found in several places.

Check out Aldo the steel baron. A 48" bar of 1084 I think goes for like $8 or something like that.

 

[quint]

I think I missed your question, sorry. Thought you were asking about working with it but seems your looking for a comparable steel. I think most of the tool steels and high carbon steels will perform as good or far better then unknown wrench steel as a knife blade.