The Secret Heat Treatment of Frank J. Richtig

Larrin

Larrin

Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
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An article about the secret heat treatment of Frank J. Richtig including analysis of the studies that have been published on it so far. Richtig became famous for chopping his knives through steel to show their excellent properties, and he was featured in Ripley’s Believe it or Not. I propose a different possible heat treatment than those in the journal articles, and provide what I think the real source of the good performance was. https://knifesteelnerds.com/2019/07/08/frank-j-richtig/
 
A little bit of showmanship and mystique goes a long way. This reminds me of kids in junior high / high school talking about how katanas could cut other swords in half, fell trees in one swipe, etc, and were always legendarily sharp.

I think the idea of the unbreakable, cuts-anything, impossibly-sharp blade is something that speaks to a lot of people. You see echoes of it in written marketing hype for modern knives, live demonstrations, commercials, magazine advertisements, etc. People want a kitchen/folding version of a Hanzo sword, and CutCo and others have made a business of pretending to make them through showmanship and the occasional outright lie.
 
Reading through old threads of Richtig knives is fun after reading this article.

I had no idea what Richtig knives were until Larrin wrote about it.

https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/frank-j-richtig.1546449/

Very rich history, really captures the imagination.

Frank was a legend, I love that a Google search brings up research papers of folks trying to study his heat treatment.

Thanks for the clarity Larrin.
 
An enjoyable read. I've been in the "Richtig was a genius--a genius salesman" camp for a long time.

It's not that hard to think of a modern equivalent, where someone takes their certainly excellent-performing but totally not mystical knife-making to the next level by injecting a salesman's dash of mystery. I'd say who I'm thinking of, but the rabid fanboys would become infinitely enraged at me if I did. ;)
 
Still makes me wonder how a 39 Rc blade can cut a 6mm bar of steel in half.
 
Twindog said:
Still makes me wonder how a 39 Rc blade can cut a 6mm bar of steel in half.
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As long as the geometry is heavy enough and the steel he is cutting is softer. Though I don't know if the 39 Rc knives were the ones most commonly used for demonstrations. Either way, none of the proposals for his "secret" heat treatment include a way to make 39 Rc steel to act harder than it is.
 
Larrin said:
As long as the geometry is heavy enough and the steel he is cutting is softer. Though I don't know if the 39 Rc knives were the ones most commonly used for demonstrations. Either way, none of the proposals for his "secret" heat treatment include a way to make 39 Rc steel to act harder than it is.
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Perhaps he did have a lot of hardness variation, and he cherry-picked the ones that performed the very best to use for the demonstrations? This combined with a sharp-but-broad edge grind with relatively thick blade stock, or something similar, might be combined with finding something heavy and sturdy (yet softer than you'd expect) as a good target for his cutting demos to wow the crowds when he did his demos.

Or an alternate explanation that is clearly much simpler: Richtig discovered a secret hardening technique that produced insane but time-limited performance, such that testing blades decades later would find them less than amazing, a secret so secretly secret that modern science could never hope to match it.
 
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evilgreg said:
Or an alternate explanation that is clearly much simpler: Richtig discovered a secret hardening technique that produced insane but time-limited performance, such that testing blades decades later would find them less than amazing, a secret so secretly secret that modern science could never hope to match it.
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Perfect use of Occam’s razor. ;)
 
I m just wondering if these legendary blades
were super hard, and that it may have meant
something near impossible to sharpen...
 
Larrin said:
I already pushed my luck when arguing with a peer reviewed journal article.
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I actually applaud your dissenting view on those articles, too much junk passes as 'scientific' these days, despite how many letters are behind someones name. (ie Doctors used to think thalidomide was a good thing and prescribed it to pregnant women... ) ... ((pps that is not meant disparage all science either, only to recognize they do suffer from blindspots like everyone, but they really ought to be quicker to figure it out))

I really am a bit surprised they took the easy outs they did... like... is all your research work really not worth getting more samples of 1095 steel to find out if your theory really held water?

(I liked the older days when the university treadmill was not in full swing, and papers really had to be actually peer reviewed and judged harshly... what passes for peer review these days reads like a monty hall d&d campaign = D )
 
It would be interesting to see someone do a purposely underaustenitized HT to compare with a steel bolt chop.
 
danbot said:
It would be interesting to see someone do a purposely underaustenitized HT to compare with a steel bolt chop.
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Like this?
Bolt.jpg
 
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