Two new knives from a car's spring

Alarion

Alarion

Joined
Nov 26, 2001
Messages
1,375
Recently a dork got up a blind bend and crashed badly my car, a tuned, 360 bhp Mitsubishi Evo IX RS, american version.
I returned the car to pristine conditions, had to change the whole front left suspension, and saw no reason to throw away a coil spring, anti roll bar and axle with less than 15.000 miles on it.
I cut down some sections of the coil spring (5160, I believe) and forged a couple of knives from it.

Here some pictures. I'm in doubt about leaving the second one as it is, or mount some wood fittings to the handle.

First knife

img4257smallpb4.jpg
 
Second knife
img4258smallco4.jpg




The knives have been forged, the annealed and finished, normalized two times, differentially heated to non mag holding the edge down on the coals kept to a gentle heat, then quenched in hydraulic oil. The blade has been then heated again, and quenched again.
Then, it has been differentially tempered, heating the spine to blue and the edge to straw, again on the coal forge, using a refractory brick to protect the blade.

The finish has been made on the grinder at 600 grit, followed by a dip in 60% ferric chloride for three minutes, moving it. Finally, the blade has been polished with metal polishing paste.

The polishing has evidenced some interesting activity in the metal near the temper line. Any ideas about what it could be?
Comments appreciated.

A detail of the blades follows.
 
Nice job turning something bad (car accident) into something good (knives). Awesome work. :thumbup:
 
Nice job. I like the idea of not wasting the steel and having something useful from an accident. The quench lines really set them off. Have you considered doing some file work on the backs? I've done a couple like that and the contrast between the rough forged look and the fancy file work really works.
Ed
 
Actually yes. I'm testing on some scrap metal before doing anything to the knives, since I never tried my hand at it, and I'm not that skilled.
I'm looking at tutorials. ;)
 
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