Titanium knives?

I have a couple of Gerber LST's with Ti blades. Used them for everyday NORMAL knife tasks. Pealing an apple, opening mail, cutting rope, Etc. Carried the smaller one for several years only had to sharpen it two or three times. The last time when I semi-retired it. It didn't really need it but I hate to grab a knife and it be dull. The larger one, I think it is the medium sized, has only been sharpened once for the same reason. Not a knife to use hard everyday but as a normal use knife not a bad choice. And no worry about staining or rust.
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Dwight

It's a fine line between "a hobby" and "mental illness".
 
1. Walt, thanks for the call.
Tungsten carbide or Talonite® is essentially carbides in a matrix. However there are a great many other factors. Gasoline is essentially gasoline but it may or may not have lead in it as well as a drying agent and other additives.

Carbide materials can gain in desirable properties with smaller grains so some things are added as grain growth inhibitors. As I understand it (which is pretty sketchy) carbides want to grow into big chunks especially between 800F and 1100 F. You need to control this grain growth so you can get to more desirable grain growth at higher temperatures.

We granted a license for some tungsten carbide processes and by the time the licensee was through describing tungsten carbide this is what we had:

"Information on treatment of other materials than tungsten carbide based grades to specifically include grades consisting primarily of tungsten carbide and any or none of the following carbides: titanium carbide, tantalum carbide, chromium carbide, vanadium carbide, molybdenum carbide and niobium carbide and a binder which usually consists of cobalt but may also be or contain nickel, chromium or iron."

I don't know what all these do but I do know that some of them are in their for non-obvious reasons and reasons not directly related to the final use of carbide but rather to the manufacturing and similar.

2. Mr. Stamp, thank you for the explanation. I was looking at it from the point of shear or fracture toughness. I certainly do not have anywhere near your expertise in testing knives to destruction and it is a very important area as you have often pointed out. Have you compiled your results anywhere and, if so, may I buy a copy? If you haven't, may I request that you do? The more we know about what you want the better we can do delivering it.

3. Bronco, Assume that a diamond coated titanium knife would have the advantage of less friction and less wear. What would it be good for? It will not do much to satisfy Mr. Stamp in his bending test, for example. How thick a coating is optimal, maximal, allowable, or suitable? The thicker the coating the longer it wears. Would a coating of 5 microns dull the edge enough to make difference? How thick is the edge? Do you want to coat the edge or just the sides? What kind of knife should you make? What shape should the blade be? What kind of titanium? If there were problems with a particular constituent of the specified grade what would be the second and third choices.

What would be the ideal use for a diamond coated knife? How small a knife can you design or specify that would still allow us to test it accurately. (If we get a small enough blade we can put it in a run of other parts and significantly reduce the cost.)

Tom
 
Tom; thank you so much for the fascinating example of lawyerspeak. I have read it four or five times, and still haven't the slightest idea of what it means.

Further, have you any idea of the monster you have created?? Coming soon to a bookstore near you...'Cliff's Notes for Knives!!'
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:
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I, of course, will now have to author a less erudite monograph, 'Knives for Dummies.'
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Thanks a lot, Mr. Walz!
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(formerly whacko) Walt
 
Tom,
It shouldn't be a secret around here that I'm not the least bit offended at being described as a cutlery technophile. I can't help but take great interest in following the trials and tribulations of the latest and greatest knife blade wonder material (no doubt to the ever growing dismay of the diehard traditional forged 1095 crowd). Whether it's Beta Ti, ceramics, Talonite, CPM-3V, CPM-15V, nitinol or whatever, the eventual shakeout of how these materials perform is very intriguing to me. It should come as little surprise then, that when someone of your experience and reputation referred to the potential for a diamond coated ti blade, my interest was piqued.

I'm honored that you would consider my opinion in such matters, but I feel I would be way out of my league in trying to provide any usable input to you. With that proviso, I'll say that by and large, coatings generate less excitement than a new steel or material composition will, because, as you've noted, they eventually wear off, or, if applied to the edge, tend to render the blade unsharpenable (without losing the coating completely). Assuming we were to use Beta Ti as our base material, I actually think that the underlying knife blade would pass many of Cliff's bend tests quite well. It seems that one of the benefits of titanium is that it can endure forces which very nearly approach the limits of its tensile strength without exceeding its yield strength. I'd be curious to know how an edge coating consisting of a material as inflexible as diamond would survive such bending. Also, when compared with most usable knife steels, I think it's fair to say that a Beta Ti edge is far more likely to deform than to chip out when meeting severe impacts. Until more is known about how the coating would react to these circumstances, it might make more sense initially to go with a smaller utility/skinning style blade as a testbed rather than a blade of a large chopping design. As to edge geometry, I'd surmise that the optimal edge angle for Beta Ti in this experiment would probably be somewhat greater that a typical angle for steel and somewhat less than the edge geometry required for a talonite or ceramic blade. Maybe an included angle of 55 to 60 degrees? Unless there were tremendous increases in cutting efficiency due to increased lubricity, I would think that the coating would probably need only be on the edge. I don't know that any of this actually helps you out at all, but it is an interesting thought exercise.

Walt, I'll be the first in line for your new book (especially if you can commission Tom Mayo to write the forward
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Semper Fi
 
Bronco; Jerry Hossom advises me that he feels Tom Mayo to be too backward to write a forward! In addition, the book is 'Knives for Dummies,' NOT 'A Book About Knives By Dummies!'
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(formerly whacko) Walt
 
well the cat is out of the bag isnt it?? I want to say from scanning (NOT reading) all of the above posts...all of you guys think way too much!!!!!! You are going to wear out your computer and get old timers disease early in life.....beta ti, alpha ti...why cant you just put on a silk ti....

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http://www.mayoknives.com


 
Hold on there Walt, Tom and I have a fun time bantering back and forth, but in the end I have a whole bunch of respect for him as a knifemaker, a person and as a friend. I really don't want him to think I speak in any such way behind his back, and would appreciate setting the record straight on this.

I'm not saying you can't have some fun with him, however...
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Jerry Hossom
www.hossom.com
 
Jerry; I don't think that anyone, except perhaps a few who have just been released from a long stay at a penal institution or a mental health facility, could think I was serious.

Tom has been e-mailing me telling me how funny he thinks some of the gags are.

For the record, however, neither Tom or Jerry have said anything critical of the other to me. Quite the opposite. However, I will not disclose what they said, as I am afraid the three of us will end up with our arms linked, singing 'Kumbaya!'
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Walt
 
On a separate subject, why would you want a Ti machete, Will? It seems to be the entirely wrong thing for a chopper, where the mass assists with the cutting action.

I as always, await enlightment. Walt
 
Tom, thanks for the fashion tips, but I didn't think anyone in Hawaii even owned a tie.
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Jerry, no need to worry.
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Most of us around here recognize that the good Doctor is in possession of a highly developed and refined sense of humor. Besides, what fun would this place be if we couldn't take a shot at Tom every now and again.

Will, you're just the man to initiate a project like that, but please give us a little time. I'm barely recovered from your announcement of the CPM-3V machete project. What an awesome machine that's going to turn out to be.

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Semper Fi
 
A machete made for cutting soft vegetation should be light -- you don't need weight and you don't want to be swinging a heavy thing around and tiring yourself out unnecessarily. There's even a guy making machetes out of 1/16" (1.6mm) ATS-34 (and they seem to be holding up, much to my surprise).

A beta ti machete might work very well ... I dunno.

-Cougar :{)
 
Man, now I've even got Cougar Allen answering Walt's challenges. Do I have this thing plugged into cruise control or what?

The guy who makes the 1/16" stock machetes is Ross Aki--a neighbor of Tom Mayo's, I take it. I've got some of his stuff on order, and yeah, Cougar, my thoughts exactly.

Machete = speed and toughness, with a nice thin edge.

I'm not talking about an axe--let's get back to the basics of life. Instead of Kumbaya, how 'bout a little "Let's go to Luchenbach, Texas..."
 
I'm on Walt's side. A little weight is helpful. When cutting brush, "soft" vegetation is not always all you have to deal with. Also, if a blade is too light, funny things happen, like that sharp stinging you get in your hand from one of those harmonics of the blade's resonant frquency. I find my Ontario Machete to be about perfect, just as I did many years back when I used one a lot.

OK Walt, you figured it out, but I bet you can't guess which one...
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Jerry Hossom
www.hossom.com

[This message has been edited by GaKnife (edited 06-12-2000).]
 
Machetes are made in different formats for different kind of vegetation, obviously. We do have some very dense mesquite down here, that is best addressed with a hatchet, or better yet a chainsaw, if you're doing more than trimming thumb-thick branches.

But there's nothing more tiring than swinging a heavy blade into heavy weeds, thick grass, and the pervasive light brush such as huisache, huajillo, tasajillo, light retama, crown of thorns, whitebrush, brazil brush, etc. This stuff is light and tough, and springy, and if you can't generate speed, it just gives--then springs back and bites the fire out of you (everything around here has thorns).

Generating speed with a heavy blade means more energy expended to get up to speed, and then you have to stop the swing after it passes through the subject material which requires more energy. A light, thin blade can do the job swiftly and effortlessly. But this stuff isn't always soft, so something tough is also required.

I'd be delighted to put a thin titanium machete into my rotation, with a blade length of 15-18". So if anyone wants to build me one, please holler. (I'll not be holding my breath.)

Okay, one more time, "Let's go to Luchenbach..."



[This message has been edited by WILL YORK (edited 06-12-2000).]
 
well, then, let's see...maybe we should try one out of something light-weight, like...?

Oh, yeah--titanium!

Damifino, Jerry. Maybe it wouldn't work worth worth a hoot--just sounds like fun to me. You of all people know how I am about machetes.
Like I said, I doubt if anyone's going to line up to build me one anytime soon, anyway. And until somebody builds one, this is purely academic. Well, maybe that's the wrong word in this case!

But TITANIUM MACHETE!!! Man, you can't tell me that doesn't have a nice "ring" to it.
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Here Will. How about the Millennium Machete? It's 22 oz. but it does the cutting for you.
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Jerry Hossom
www.hossom.com

[This message has been edited by GaKnife (edited 06-12-2000).]
 
Flat grind one of those for me in 3V, would ya? Distal taper?
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Seriously, I wish you'd quit flipping that pic around on the forums. You catch me off guard and before I know it, I'm panting and drooling all over myself. My wife doesn't seem to mind, but my dog's getting embarrassed.



[This message has been edited by WILL YORK (edited 06-12-2000).]
 
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