tungsten why not ?

J

josephus

Joined
Sep 7, 2003
Messages
20
hi all

i was reading about ballistics and about how the ww2 powers soughtto use this metal as it was denser than steel and capable of cutting through steel armour of tanks at speed.

apparently its quite good at going through steel so i wondered.

why dont we make knives out of it ? wouldnt they be tougher ?

thanks for the thoughts.

josephus
 
people do.
We make medical knives out of Hastelloy, which has a decent percentage of tungsten in it. Beautifull material BTW, whitish and can take a awesome polish. Hard as hell, and tough to boot. hard and tough are hard to find in combination.
 
I think Farid Mehr does make a tungsten blade. It is very heavy as compared to lead which is soft - in the context of ammunition use. For blade use it is very brittle, it could cut the S30V steel but if you drop it 3' to the floor, it could shatter. Have you seen the inserts used on machining steel equipments such as lathes and milling machines? They usually shatter instead of getting worn. It also comes in hardened state so machining the blade is a no-no. The only way to machine it is by using diamond. It is classified as a ceramic and not steel.
 
Steels containing decent amounts of Tungsten are normally very costly. I believe F8 is a high Tungsten steel, and it costs about as much as gold.
 
M2 is one of the few steels out there used for knives that has a high percentage of Tungsten (W): 2.25-2.75. Vascowear (if you can find it) also has a high amount: 1.10. As Danbo said, F8 clobbers them all with 8.0.
 
It tends to be very brittle. Which means much lateral force at all causes cracking and or breaking.
 
Tungsten carbide (not pure tungsten as a metal) is what is being referred to here in reference to machine tools and such. Very hard (Rc 72-77), very wear resistant (resists abrasive wear), and so is a good material for use in cutting other hard materials, e.g. hardened steels.

Tungsten carbide is the opposite of "tough", it is brittle. ("Tough" on these forums refers to impact resistance, resistance to chipping).

Tungsten carbides, when included in a steel matrix, like in a knife blade made from a high speed steel like M2, can contribute to making a very wear resistant blade (resists abrasive wear, like from cutting abrasive materials, e.g. dirty animal hides, cardboard, rope).
 
Tungsten is heavy, expensive, and difficult to work with. This is why those tanks you mentioned were armored with steel instead.

I believe that the dust generated when it is ground (or sharpened) is very toxic, as well.

The fact that something is dense enough to punch through armor plate doens't mean that it'll function well as a knife blade. Two very different applications which call for very different properties.
 
I ran a search on tungsten metal and found some sites. The alloys I got information on ran 85-95% tungsten and mostly were used for weighting material. The hardest ran in the low 40s HRC. It doesn't look like it will make very good knives. With a specific gravity over 19, it is almost twice as dense as lead and is right up there with gold, irridium and osmium.

Maybe they will start to make waterfowl shot from it, it is not as toxic as lead. I bet it would be great for shotshells.
 
I used to have 3 pure tungsten rods when I was a kid, around 15 years ago. What I remember for sure are two things:

a) Very hard to file. The rods were 5 mm in diameter, and had rough edges, I've tried to smooth those with a file, no success. Well, the metal was clarly being filed but it was soooo slow, I couldn't finish it, I just gave up after an hour of filing or so.
b) Not brittle at all. I couldn't break the rod with the hammer.

And as many stated it is very heavy.

BTW the metal itself is silver, but the surface had some strange grinish color, as I was told oxidation effect. Looked cool though.
 
Frankly, I don't know if tungsten is good to be used as blade material. There are certain variables involved. However, I do know that tungsten for darts is simply great! :)
 
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