Using a plasma cutter for stock removal.

S

SturmMonkey

Joined
Mar 29, 2012
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I have a friend that has a plasma cutter, and I am wondering if there are any issues with using it to profile a knife?

If it matters, I am using 1095.
 
if you don't mined I would lie to add a question to your thread would this create a "work tempered" area of the blank.

thanks
 
You would have to grind a little of the melted part off but it should not be a problem. you would profile before heat treat so the heat effected area is not an issue.
 
The plasma cutter would cause a bit of decarb but as John said, grinding a bit away would leave you with good steel. However, there would have been some heat transfer further into the blank and to think it wouldn't effect the steel in heat treat would be unwise, especially in thinner stock. Warping in the quench could be an issue. A few normalization cycles would fix things right up.
 
Agreed, normalizing and stress relieving are a good practice with any steel that has seen heat or deformation since the anneal.
 
I've uses the one at work to cut out stock before and it worked alright. The only problem comes from all the heat it puts off. It would basically heat treat the edge and it was pretty hard to remove
 
Cut wide, and grind in a bit. When cutting with the torch move fast to minimize heat. You wont get a fantastic cut, but you'll need to grind off a bit anyways. about 3mm is what I've done in the past. Also if your metal is thick it will take longer to cut and get hotter at least in theory. I havnt done anything over 1/8th.
 
I think it's just much easier to just use a hacksaw, rather than a plasma cutter.

No hassle dealing with normalizing.
 
I started with a hack saw, and with 1/4" steel it was more effort than I had wanted to put into it. The plasma cutter saved me days hacking away with my saw.

To normalize do I just put them in the oven like in the file knife tutorial?
 
No, thats tempering. To normalize a knife you need to heat it past it curie point and hold it there for some time, then cool it slowly.

Sounds to me like you're making a knife out of a file? it wont really be worth the time to use a plasma cutter, unless you just wanted to lop off part of the file to shorten it. In which case use that side as the handle. otherwise you're not removing enough metal to make it worth it.
 
The steel is from Aldo and it is 1/4' 1095 which in hind sight was much thicker than I probably needed for my first knives.

Here is how they turned out. I have a little more to do on the curves but so far I am pleased.
Knives01.jpg
 
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