The "Ask Nathan a Question" Thread

No, we don't offer blasting of the scales as an option here.

If you're worried about messing up your scales sanding them, be careful about your technique. I might wrap the sandpaper around a small dowel and follow the shape of the grooves and take a few spins along the length of each groove with sharp silicon carbide sandpaper. Changing it out frequently. This would minimize changes to the shapes.

Although if I was doing it I would just use my fingertip and accept I'm going to round things out a little bit.
 
I have a question... (maybe someone already asked this so do forgive me if that's the case).

What are your thoughts on entertaining new designs? As it stands now, you're lineup is already legendary but I'm curious if you have plans to bring other models to market somewhere down the road.
 
SwissHeritageCo said:
I have a question... (maybe someone already asked this so do forgive me if that's the case).

What are your thoughts on entertaining new designs? As it stands now, you're lineup is already legendary but I'm curious if you have plans to bring other models to market somewhere down the road.
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My understanding is that the mythical neck knife is in the works. It's basically an 80% sized DEK1 with a skeletonized handle and thin taco kydex with ulticlip in Magnacut. It should be ready for the next Friday Sale.
 
The FUNK...Functional Utility Neck Knife. Basic field grade.

The UNKLE...Utility Neck Knife Limited Edition. Swedge and satin finish.

The CHUNK...Carothers Heavy Use Neck Knife. A thicker stock tanto version.

Nathan, let's talk. I could fund this project.
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
No, that's not how it works, it won't lose its heat treat in the summer heat. Although it certainly will in a campfire.

In a nutshell, the hardness of the steel comes from a structure called martensite which forms when carbon is able to get physically stuck between atoms of iron crystals at a high temperature (where the crystalline structure changes from body centered cubic to face-centered cubic and there's physically space for the carbon atoms to get stuck and trapped, it really is that simple) and they are locked in place when it's cooled down, straining the metallic bonds and hardening the structure. This hard structure is then tempered after quenching to relieve some of the strain and draw the steel back to a specific hardness.

There's a little more to it than that, but this is the general gist.

This is pretty much permanent unless you heat the steel above the tempering temperature, which will draw the hardness back farther.

There is something called retained austinite that can spontaneously convert over time, but a cryogenic treatment addresses the vast vast majority of any stabilized retained austinite and we do that.

My knives have been under -300°f as a part of their manufacturing process, any cold winter temperature you're going to subject it to will seem balmy in comparison.

The biggest danger is heating up the very leading apex of the edge when sharpening. The knife might not even seem hot, but if it is sharpened under powered equipment, you can draw the edge back, and that's the part that really matters.

But, assuming you don't burn your knife, the metallurgical structures that give it the characteristics that it has are, for all intents and purposes, permanent as long as you never overheat it. My tempering temperatures are in the 400s. Stay below that and it's fine.

It is an interesting question though. What happens to steel when it's 1,000 years old or a million years old?

There is a secondary hardening mechanism, precipitation hardening, and some materials can precipitate particles causing dislocations in the matrix creating strain hardening that way. For example aluminum gets harder and more brittle as it ages. Stronger too. Some titanium is this way. Lots of materials are like this. To a small degree, steel is also, although to a very small degree and this is very alloy dependent. The potential for spontaneous precipitation of some particle or conversion of retained austinite into something like bainite probably exists, but not to a meaningful degree in a human lifetime. But, thousands of years from now, I don't really know the answer to that.

Things like plastics break down naturally over the course of just decades, but they depend upon covalent bonds which are not readily reversible if they break. Metals hold together in a different way and, since those electrons are always moving around from place to place endlessly, those bonds, if broken, can just instantly reform. This makes metal much more long-lasting than anything dependent upon molecules. Fundamentally, there are no molecules in steel. In reality, there are some, the carbides, but iron is not fundamentally a molecular structure and does not have the limitations of one. Unless you get into intra granular corrosion and stuff like that, and there's them pesky molecules again.
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Thanks for your response, Nathan, it makes a lot of sense. Now, knowing that your heat treat process takes your knives to the boiling point of Nitrogen, I am not concerned at all about exposure to extreme cold unless a knife is taken on a space walk. On the other extreme, high desert temperature, the recorded measured temperatures of various objects at high temperature desert sun exposure are all under 180 degrees Fahrenheit. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10211493/ is one example). I bet those temps were measured at the center of the object. The sharp edge, however, could reach a higher temp but it is hard to imagine it will be over 200F. Will 200F do any damage to heat treat? Say someone uses his knife to boil his coffee at 212F and leaves the knife in the hot coffee pot for a while, will that damage the heat treat?
 
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