Tungstem Carbide Knives

Hmm, maybe theres some alloy of it?
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Yes, there is a suitable tungsten alloy for knife blades. Its M2, a high content tungsten/molybdenum alloy. Its pretty tough stuff even at 62HRC, and if tempered right it will hold a very good edge better and longer than most materials. The down side is its real hard to work with. I have an M2 blade, and it takes about the most scary-sharp edge I have ever seen.
 
I have given making knives from ultrahard materials some thought. One way to make a knife with a tungsten carbide blade would be to sandwich a sheet of TC between two sheets of high speed steel and solder them in place making them very similar to a san mai blade. I chose HSS because it can be harden prior to soldering and would remain hard after soldering to prevent having to harden the steel afterwards and risk thermal shock weaking the blade.

The steel would provide toughness and resistance to shock and lateral forces and the TC would be the cutting edge. I have never been able to find a piece of TC of the right dimensions ideally 1x5x0.04 inches for folder blades.

A sheet of synthetic sapphire could also be made into blades but Ihaven't gone into the costs. Diamond abrasive belts can be obtained from suppliers dealing with supplying abrasives to the glass industry.
 
cybrok said:
I have an exam next week with a part about this, I'll check in my books and come back to you.
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Guess what, I had a question on the subject. Thanks to you guys I took some time to take a good look at it :)
 
I can't remember where I seen it, but a few days ago I seen a knife the had a edge made of tungeston carbide. The interesting thing is I think it was embedded in carbonfiber. So, to make it a little clearer the cutting edge was about a 1/4 in or so thick and about 4-5 inches long and the carbonfiber made up the rest of the blade and held the edge in place.

MPE
 
Wow. Those are sweet. I will have to see about hunting one of those down.

MPE
 
The stainless steel Spyderco kerambit was originally a Warren Thomas titanium design. (The Spydie is still sweet! :))
 
Are the knives by WT made with Tungsten Carbide Blades ?
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WT uses a carbide edge on (some of) his blades.

... would a Tungsten Carbide edge ever need sharpening...
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The edge should last a long time. Of course, many of WT's knives end up for show, which is a shame in a way, since both materials & construction seem excellent.

The company that sells my tungsten carbide scribers also sells replacement points for them. Everything eventually wears out.

Old mountains are young hills;
old hills are young plains;
old plains are young oceans;
old oceans are dry. :)
 
Diamond dust. :)

Seriously, I would guess that would be like ceramic blades. The edge lasts and lasts, but it is too different to sharpen by yourself unless you really know your stuff. It would have to go back to the knifemaker or manufacturer. How did they get a sharp edge on it in the first place!?
 
I used to run a chamfering machine at work for chamfering the ends of pins. It used Tungsten Carbide cutters. You had to be extremely careful when moving the cutters up to the edge of the pin otherwise they would chip very easy.
 
The closest you will probably find is maybe Talonite? that has a fairly high carbide content.

Interestingly I have a couple of kitchen knives with tungsten carbide coated blades. Fairly cheap but they work well for general kitchen beaters. The blade is fairy standard cheap stainless steel with one side of the sharpened edge coated with a strip of tungsten carbide about 3mm wide for the length of the blade. The idea is cutting things with the knife very slowly wears away the cheap steel but the tungsten carbide stays behind, leaving a permanently sharp edge.

They havent gone blunt yet and I use them regularly, they cut well but the edge is fairly rough (certainly not razor sharp) and its difficult to cut in a straight line with them because the high friction of the tungsten coated side of the blade pulls the cut around in an arc.

Good kitchen beater but you definatley notice the difference when you go back to a high quality forged high carbon chefs knife.
 
i dont think TC (aka hardmetal) would be all that good, definitely not good for an allround knife. some varieties are very tough (for being hardmetal that is)but they wont stand up to any abuse. if you dont pay attention when machining stuff with hardmetal tools it gets expensive quick, those small inserts are quite expensive.

however i dont think it will hold a good edge much longer than steel, maybe 50% longer maybe more. i mean if you use the right feed/rpm/cooling etc with hss it holds a good edge for a long time. both have their uses, hardmetal for hogging away alot of steel fast, hss for fine cutting (the last cuts) when a very good surface is needed, you can remove very little material if you want (as opposed to hardmetal), very delicate cuts can be made with hss.

i dont think it dangerous to use hardmetal near food, maybe little, vanadium is not that tasty either btw.

i would like to see a 1nm layer of aggregated diamond nanorods glued to 2 beta ti sheets (unobtanium plated of course), it should come with v-type adjustable angle dual 1kw argonlaser pocketsharpener (spare hands/fingers not included).
 
I believe after we see the first carbide alloy pocket folder, we will be wanting knives made of diamond :p
 
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