Stellite Alloy Fusion-- SharpFusion Technology

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Mike Snody
KnifeMaker

Registered: Aug 2000
Location: usa
Posts: 75
Genius
Thanks for your contribution to this thread Mr. Harley.

When I started this thread several days ago I knew that without a doubt, some genius would challenge the process, myself or both.


u musta been talking to my wife. She says I, m a genius too.
if you, ll go back and read my post I challenged neither the process nor u.


Every time something that goes against the mainstream is introduced into knifemaking it is challenged by, you guessed it “some genius”.
I am very familiar with your type of mentality Mr. Harley as I deal with it on a daily basis.

just what type of mentality is that????

My customers are very important to me Larry and they deserve and demand to know exactly what they are spending their money on.
When they buy a SharpFusion knife they are getting a blade, which was made by an individual who has twenty years experience in the field.


U been making knives thta long??
Not some idiot with a coat hanger and oxy/acetylene torch.

sureley your not calling me an idiot r u??
although i can wield up the crack of dawn or a broken heart w a coat hanger


When they go to a show and a Genius speaks negatively of SharpFusion they will ask the Genius exactly what his qualifications are. The Genius will of course have no solid credentials and that will be the end of that
In closing let me thank you once again for your comments.
You see Larry this is the very reason I listed my credentials. Not to try and impress you or anyone else
. It is to combat the ignorance that your post has just demonstrated.

So now u r calling me ignorant??????

I will present the knifeworld with cold hard facts regarding SharpFusion. One of the key facts is that I have been engaged in similar processes on a much larger and more demanding scale for the past twenty years.

When someone speaks in a negative manner about SharpFusion ask for his or her credentials.
If they provide you with solid credentials listen to what they have to say. If they cannot provide you with credentials or facts then they are an idiot. Or should I say Genius.

This is not my first rodeo Mr. Harley.

If you want take cheap shots at me I am very easy to find.
You can call me, email me or visit my table at anyone of the Shows I attend.

i wasn't going to respond to u mike but after thinking about it i thought nawwwww
i, ll jerk his chain some more
first of all i didn't impugn u nor your process in any way
i only made fun of the way u were legitimizing your self it struck me as funny
sorry
BUT
your defensive response was un called for.
i think your a little too touchy kinda as if u was took off the teat too soon or potty trained way too early
u gottt real close to calling me several nasty names
u don, t want to do that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
so in honor of u mike I've decided to go into business i, ll trade market it and try to sell it to all the big knife co.

Press Release


During the past few days I have spent endless hours with little sleep backed by over
one hundred Metallurgist on staff at a world leader in Material Sciences.
Developing a new grade of steel. This advancement in materials is Trade Marked "CORNFUSION" Not to be mistaken with SHARPFUSION". This new blade material will not rust and cuts forever i have named it unobtanium . The cost of Manufacturing is yet to be determined and all further
developments will be posted as advancements are made. All questions will be answered and posted as findings are made.

Larry Harley.
 
Mike please don't take the bait. Just ignore it and continue to give us updates on your exciteing new process!:D
I was wondering, when you fuse together the two materials does the fusion go all the way through the matrix of the medium, or just partially?
 
Mike after thinking about your thread for the past few days I
spoke with a few of Bodycote's Research Metalurgist about fusion
of Stellite to either Titanium or 300 series stainless steel. About
different methods of bonding the two materials. Can you comfirm your method is not one of the following.


LASER POWDER FUSION WELDING
HIP CLADDING
D-GUN OR FLAME SPRAY
ELECTRON BEAM WELDING

My only other question what do you see as the advantage of Sharpfusion
over a solid Talonite Blade.

Darrell Lewis
WWW.Bodycote.com

YOU MAKE IT FIRST- WE MAKE IT LAST
p.s IF HARLEY CAN MAKE STEEL AS GOOD AS HIS LIQUOR WATCH OUT
 
Hey Larry,

I have read your posts before on the forums and they are always the same. You jump in with a smart-ass comment or two and then you leave.

Out of the 75 posts I have made, how many of them were smart-ass comments that contributed nothing to the topic? Zero.

Defensive? Hell yeah. Quick trigger? I am your man Larry.

I did not start this Larry, you did.

I did not call you anything Larry, read my post again.
I stated that your post was ignorant. I stand by that.

I stated that I am familiar with your mentality. I am.
I have 75 welders on my jobsite that answer to me.
They can weld a broken heart, crack of dawn and just about anything else too.

They also believe that my credentials are silly.
20 years ago I was one of them, working offshore on a drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico as a welder.
20 years ago I also thought credentials were silly.
That is the mentality I am referring to Larry.

I have been a knifemaker for two years. This information is on my website. Does that threaten you in some way?
My backlog is currently well over a year. I am not taking orders for SharpFusion knives or anything else.
The forums have been good to me Larry. I have made many good friends. I felt like telling them about SharpFusion before they read about it in the magazines.


I have paid my dues Larry as a hand on drilling rigs in South Texas and a rig welder on cross country pipelines in Southern California and 20 other states. It was only after years of going to night school and tens of thousands of dollars in certifications that I was able to get where I am today.

You may have the wrong man here Larry.


In my world I am challenged on a daily basis. I respond to the challenges without hesitation, which is the way it has to be.
You challenged me Larry and I responded.
If you were on my project you would be a G.A. (gone ass)
But it is not that simple here on the forums.

I had a welder on my job a while back that thought my credentials were silly. He also thought our safety rules were silly. He tried to cut a hole in his hard hat with a large pocketknife while it was on his head. He wanted to install headphones and listen to music. He ended up in the hospital with a cut head and missing finger. He had to put his hand under his hard hat to keep it on his head while cutting. When the knife went through it cut off his finger. He is now a G. A.
Another one somehow got his nut sack on the muffler of a large concrete saw. He passed out from the pain and stayed there until workers removed him. He sustained third degree burns and had to wear a diaper for three weeks. He is now a G.A. Another one decided to climb a 50’ tank to take a leak.
He did not know that the Osha inspector was on site. The Osha inspector walked by the tank and literally got pissed on. The guy was standing on the edge with no harness. You guessed it. G.A.

This really has nothing to do with our little talk but since we are getting to know each other I just felt compelled to share it with you. I will try to get back on topic now.




If someone slaps you in the face Larry what do you do?
Do you slap them back or do you double up that big ass fist of yours and knock their head off?

Now we can go back to talking about knives or we can go wherever you want to take this.

The choice is yours Larry.

If you meant nothing by your initial post then I meant nothing by my response.

I enjoyed reading the article Bud Lang wrote about you Larry.
Shame we had to meet this way.

As Brad pointed out Knifemaking is changing very rapidly.
Makers of the Twenty First Century have two choices, they can “think outside of the box” and push themselves to the limit or they will end up being a G.A.
Scratching their unemployed ass with the guy who burned his nut sack.

Those are the lessons for the day.

1. Don’t burn your nut sack on a muffler.
2. Don’t get complacent in your knifemaking.

There are a bunch of new makers out there that are HMT (hungry, mean and tired)
I am one of them!


Larry, a Trademark will not protect your process of Cornfusion, it will only protect the actual name "Cornfusion".
If you want protection for the Cornfusion process you will need a Cornfusion Patent.
You will have to prove to an examiner that you have incorporated a truly novel step into the process of Cornfusion to have a chance at getting one. It is not easy to do this. Good luck.





Mike Snody
 
Hello all,
I think it is very interesting that all these technologies are being applied to knives. For several thousand years now man has used every and all materials for cutlery in one form or another. This fusion stuff is along those lines. We are all trying to form something of good quality and this is admirable, but often times the steps we undertake blind us from the goal.

I have been working with and around a few universities and they are a hot bed of innovation, but I have often seen that, in their fervor to produce something new or better, the goal becomes shadowed.

I have seen it mentioned that credentials are needed to participate in this discussion so here are mine:
--Studied history/hist of science/hist of technology at Univ Wisconsin-Madison
---traditionally trained as a blacksmith ten years ago by Paul Marx of Madison, WI
---worked in general architectural shop in Florida for three years as lead smith
--Now run my own small shop in Sturgeon Bay, WI
---One of the few who can make wootz steel (some call this the "original Damascus", but this is erroneous)
--My work with Northwestern Univ is mentioned in "wired" magazine last March under the project name "Dragonslayer" http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.02/dragonslayer.html
--short web article on me so you can put a face to my name and see one blade of mine:http://swordforum.com/summer99/ricfurrer.html
--current work with the Univ Wisconsin in cutlery steel development which should foster some interesting results soon.

Well, now that that is over lets talk steel.
I'm curious to see what the size of the carbides are in your stellite edge and how easily the customer can redress the edge once it dulls. From what I see you have excellent bonding and more ductility than a knife needs, but as you know, there is more to a knife than those properties. The wear properties of the stellite group of steels is well known, but I'm curious why you chose this as the steel for the edge material on a cutting tool.

Mike and Brad and everyone else, I'll be assisting with a steel making demo at the Fall hammer-in in Old Washington, AR the 27th of October. http://www.americanbladesmith.com/ABS_Events.htm
I encourage everyone to attend and we can discuss metallurgy and do some testing of theory verse practice.

If you want to discuss ideas and developments I am open, if you want to try and rip me a new one, well I can do that as well. Either way, I'm available.
Richard Furrer
Sturgeon Bay, WI
(920) 746-0313
rfurrer@itol.com
 
Hey Richard,

I am currently working with three different Stellite alloys.
None of them will be “easy” to re-sharpen. I am glad that you asked these questions because it gives me an opportunity to clarify a couple of things. I chose Stellite as a starting point for several reasons. It is becoming a very popular blade material and I have had numerous requests from customers for Stellite blades. I will now offer SharpFusion Stellite blades for those customers who want a Snody knife made from Stellite. I will continue to utilize all of the current blade steels that I am now grinding as well. Stellite is not for everyone. Having said that let me also say that I do believe that it has a place in the cutlery world.

Darrel,

A SharpFusion blade which utilized a Talonite cutting edge and a Talonite body would have no advantages over a solid Talonite blade.

Performance advantages can only be realized by adding something to the mix that the base alloy is lacking.

It is ultimately up to the customer to determine if this is something they are interested in.

I will present them with data on the two alloys that are used and let them make the decision.

Obviously there will be an advantage to the maker in terms of cost of the base materials and machinability.

If you want to discuss the fusion process in greater detail please email or call me.
Regards,
Mike Snody
www.snodyknives.com
 
I personally think the temper line look is cool. Hopefully the cost of this won't push the price past a solid Stellite blade. The only advantage of this to me is cost related. Other than that pushing the envelpoe is the right thing to do. We all benefit from it,congrats Mike! ;)
 
If knifemakers are not pushing the envelope and thinking outside the box then all we are doing is making something you could just as easily buy from a factory. I don't have jack for credentials, and I've been making knives for about 20 years, but so what? If I don't pick up that next piece of metal thinking that what comes of it will be better than the last knife I made, this would just be a job and as a job the pay sucks. If I can't advance the results through my efforts, my legacy is just some rusting steel that will be tossed in the trash long before I'm gone.

I personally don't know a single good knifemaker who doesn't work his tail off trying to make better knives than he does today, trying new things constantly. The very best knifemakers I know try the hardest, no matter how good they already are. Further, they share what they know unstintingly and without hesitation, as Mike has done here. AND, they all listen carefully to every idea that comes there way, sifting through all that information for something, anything that will make their knives even better.

The smartest thing Mike could have done perhaps is to just keep this technology to himself until his patent work is completed, until he has lots of knives for sale using SharpFusion, has a deal wrapped up with one or more of the knife companies, until he could completely maximize his financial opportunity from his developmental efforts. Had he been less forthcoming on his credentials, none of us would have known that his experience and education does indeed equip him to know what he is talking about. If he had known any less about what he is doing, what he has accomplished would be far less impressive than it clearly is. Had he been less completely honest, he wouldn't have just admitted that hanging some Talonite off the front of a piece of steel offers no advantage. Had he less character, he'd probably just said screw you guys and gone on to do his own thing without us.

It seems to me that the smart thing to do here is to ask good questions and listen carefully and respectfully to the answers.

Thanks Mike.
 
Mike and all,
The stumbling block I have about this stuff is not over the bonding technology, but rather the choice of materials. I just don't understand why all that cobalt is wanted in a knife steel. The wear properties are from the large carbide clusters which form due to the alloy content. You are getting the ductility via the body of the blade you are fussing the stellite onto. It just does not seem like a cutting steel to me and the ease of redressing the edge is important unless the knife is to be used in short bursts where the client can get back to a different sharpening system than a pocket stone. I'd wager that the stellite edge would eat an Arkansas stone quickly.

I agree that stellite makes for a great wear surface, but in a knife wear properties are only part of the equation.
A picky point I have is that the color diffence is not a temper line, but an alloy band due to a large difference in chemistry.

Richard Furrer
Sturgeon Bay, WI
 
Mike, there was a good question or rather a worry that the new process might keep the knives price range up out of the reach of most of us, how much more do you figure it will make the price jump?
if any he says hopefully ;)

Also it's good to hear/read others views on this process and I see a few new people on the forums, glad to hear their take on this but I also agree that flaming should be kept towards heat treating a blade and not towards each other, at a time like this, well any time really, we need to stick together and show the world that we are not petty but can work things out...my .02 on the odd posts...
G2
G2
 
At some point I thought Mike had mentioned that this process would make a blade material that was similarly priced to the better blade making steels. If that is the case and this stuff works out to be as good as Mike hopes it will be then I think we have a very exciting process here.

Larry you make great knives and I value your input as a maker very much. It would be nice if you had something constructive to say though. The fact that Mike has all of these credentials does take away anything from the fact that he makes great knives. If you have some knowledge as to the fact that what Mike is trying to do will not work, let us know, otherwise your posts just look like sour grapes.
 
Keith, I received a nice email from Mike Snody that indicates the price of one of these will be less than one made with solid billet of Stellite so that in itself is good bit of news....

Don't know about the sour grapes deal, but the grapes are getting ripe about now around my house and the bear often wander through my yard to pick at them, black bear, pretty good size ones too! Had a panther/cougar pass through not too long ago one night, about scared the life out of my wife, I went out with my SureFire 9P and flashed it across this large cat, black as night it was, as it was standing broadside about 40 yards away, the light as some of you know, really throws out a powerful beam, it lit up the woods behind the panther quite well and I had a shiver run up my spine when I saw that cat standing there and turn it's head towards me and then slink off quickly into the woods! YIKES! We haven't seen it since....but then we don't want to either!

G2
 
I will speak for my own sharpfusion knives.It will add 50.00 to the price.This is for Stellite 6K.That is about half of what it would add if I used a solid 6K bar.
Thanks,
Brad
 
It just does not seem like a cutting steel to me and the ease of redressing the edge is important unless the knife is to be used in short bursts where the client can get back to a different sharpening system than a pocket stone. I'd wager that the stellite edge would eat an Arkansas stone quickly.
Click to expand...



Richard I think now with all the different diamond sharpeners on the market today sharpening a SharpFusion blade in the feild will not be an issue. It does bring up a good point though. I am interested in hearing about any cutting tests you guys have done.
 
Mike is working on a few different kinds of new blade materials at this time. Personally I think it is great that this industry has people like Mike, who are willing to try and find new materials that will possibly make for better or more reasonably priced knives.

Gary, that sounds like a bit of an adventure. On many of my trips into the mountains and back woods of Alberta I have run into bear, mountain lion and wolf. The wolves were the most interesting as I did not feel in the least bit of danger. They came up very close, but were never aggressive. I came to respect and love wolves a great deal. The bears just turned and ran even the grizzlies. The mountain lions on the other hand were quite often aggressive and needed a little persuasion to move on their way. The most frightening animal that I have ever run into was a cow moose with her calf. I gave her a very wide berth.

I have no idea what this has to do with the topic being discussed here, but you brought up something very dear to my heart, so I thought I would comment on it.
 
Interesting Stuff! Thanks for the information guys. I guess like most things, time will tell. I look forward to future developments.

I wish posts wouldn't take on unnecessary dimensions.
:confused:
 
I would really think you would have given this guy a permotion for this. Not canned him. Wish I had seen it happen
Mike wrote...
Another one decided to climb a 50’ tank to take a leak.
He did not know that the Osha inspector was on site. The Osha inspector walked by the tank and literally got pissed on.
 
Hey Mike and all ,

Well he could have said ," I have testimonials from 6 continents and 450 contries , from jungle to jungle and desert to desert clients who have been saved by my blades and won't leave home without one ." ( ok Mike you where I got this from don't you ) Well anyhow all I want to know is when can I have one ? I've never made a blade , don't know a square wheel grinder from adams a** ,but I sure know a fine blade when I put my hands on it and Mike certainly knows his knife making . I worked as journeyman in the gas fields and boilerrooms of south Texas for a few years during school , people with Mikes credentials are the very people who keep one from blowing onesself and others up when doing hot tapps on 4000 psi live gas lines . I really think he knows of which he speaks . And it just looks way cool .

Regards,
Jerry
 
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