Video of my first 90 bend flex test.

Guy Thomas said:
That's a really good question and not one I have a good answer for. I have no idea how a new heat treatment would actually affect metal fatigue like that but I'm not so sure it would return it to it's original state. Hopefully one of our more knowledgable members could address that. I'm curious.
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I don't have the answer either but I would think that you'd need to take the handle and guard off, and then risk "decarbing" and other stuff like that, so that even if you put everything back into "solution" and had a molecular restructuring maybe it would be easier to just start over with fresh steel. Course I am probably butchering the correct processes involved but it seems like a lot of work.
 
Alan I would like to applaud you for the testing you are doing. It shows that you really care about what you are doing. A few points. If the hunters are breaking knives on deer, some one needs to teach them how to use their tools properly. In more that 30 years making hunting knives for all kinds of hunting, and sporting activities, I know of not one single failure. All Lovett Blades are triple tempered. This gives flex to a very high Rockwell in the steel I use. Don't confuse flex with bending. A well tempered blade should flex and return on its own, way before breaking. If you edge didn't crack in the initial bend, it is because more than likely heat leached back down the blade after the quench, slowing the hardening process. If it didn't crack, it wasn't fully hardened. But more to the point, A proper spring temper comes from fully hardening the blade, and then selectively drawing the temper when you want it. Such as the spine. To simply harden the edge, and not the blade proper, you have nothing more than effectively making a knife in which the largest portion of the blade is really nothing more than cold rolled low carbon steel. As you never took advantage of the carbon content of the steel, there fore never allowing the steel to go thru the transformation that makes the difference between high carbon steel, and simple low carbon. You could have obtained similar results using low cost low carbon cold roll, and treating the edge with a case hardening compound. It would show similar results, but make a less than superior blade. Finlay, If the edge was indeed fully hard and did not crack, you have just disproved your own theory. As if a thin section didn't crack when fully hard. A thick section surely wouldn't. The most benefit of testing is to learn. But you must be able to understand what the results are telling you. Kinda like when we tried making meals in out mom's kitchen floor as children. (When mom wasn't around) Out of everything in the cabinet. It all sounded right at the time! YUCH!!! Mike
 
It's the pelvic bone and chest that is ALL,,,,ALL the problem for the knives my guys own.

There is this cute little saw that is made to cut such bone and thats the real answer here...right tool for the job.
Mostly all the other places on a deer have ways to cut between the joint and separate the joint.

What they seem to do is cut/bang/twist/yank to handle some deer cutting situations.
Thats what i have to keep in mind as I make a knife to replace the ones that chipped or snapped.
 
Alan you should make more videos of the whole knife making process and sell them you did a good job of explaining what you were doing.
 
warrior24 said:
Alan you should make more videos of the whole knife making process .
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Oh,,,,,one day.....

I have a dream, that I get a job writing and doing videos about knives and swords.
I would love to be able to make my own steel from Minnesota taconite.
I would love to make a video where I show how to make a such steel and turn it into a Japanese Samurai sword....(Except I would love to invent a way to add the color red to the steel somehow)

When I retire I want to be able to do two things, Play Kendo 3 times a week all day, and do bladesmithing the other days.

Then gathering my minions to a compound in Montana, I will set myself up as a god-like figure, spending my nights haveing my naked body oiled by mute Geisha girls while Adam Ant blares in the background.

During the day?....well, I would tell you, but it might seem kinda weird because it involves monkeys and a refridgerator....
 
Alan Molstad said:
Oh,,,,,one day.....

I have a dream, that I get a job writing and doing videos about knives and swords.
I would love to be able to make my own steel from Minnesota taconite.
I would love to make a video where I show how to make a such steel and turn it into a Japanese Samurai sword....(Except I would love to invent a way to add the color red to the steel somehow)

When I retire I want to be able to do two things, Play Kendo 3 times a week all day, and do bladesmithing the other days.

Then gathering my minions to a compound in Montana, I will set myself up as a god-like figure, spending my nights haveing my naked body oiled by mute Geisha girls while Adam Ant blares in the background.

During the day?....well, I would tell you, but it might seem kinda weird because it involves monkeys and a refridgerator....
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Ahahaha, lol, Alan! :D
 
warrior24 said:
Alan you should make more videos of the whole knife making process and sell them you did a good job of explaining what you were doing.
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My wife was reading the comments, and caught yours here, and suggested that I go ahead and get a High Def video camera and do some stuff to be recorded that I could put in a DVD format.

We got the tax money to spend on something fun, and making a funny DVD video of how I forge, H/T , solder, and make a handle and sheath would be something I could sell on EBAY to guys with too much money....


It would be something I would be interested in doing...I could make it part of my plan to take over the world ....
 
mlovett said:
If it didn't crack, it wasn't fully hardened.
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This might be the case.
Remember the Heat-treatment system that is my hope to learn in the future is to bring some of the things I have read about from Japan to my own blades.

I like the way the Japanese Katana is forged and HT to get to the shape and strength that Im also looking to reach.

I like the way the Japanese smith will clay-coat the blade to allow parts of the blade to become very hard, while slowing the quench of other parts of the blade so they dont get as hard.

What Im thinking about doing in the future is to experiment with clay and the use of clay to Heat-treat my future blades.
Im not sure what type of steel would be best for this type of forge work yet, perhaps a 10XX steel?

I like to quench in oil, the flameups are fun,,,But I would love to add clay to my system so as to be able to draw right where the hamon will appear on the finished blade..

I also like the way a Japanese smith will apply thin strips to clay as a 2nd coating over parts of the cutting edge steel to provide that steel with a bit of more protection and allowing tiny insulators to form narrow channels of softer pearlite steel embedded right inside the hardened steel of the cutting edge.

This I believe is where I see my future in bladesmithing one day...Learing to mix different forms of steel in the quench to bring out an effect I seek.

That, and to somehow learn to bring some color to steel......not sure how, but blade steel really needs a splash of color in my view.
I look at all the knife steel that is sold on sites like the Texas knifemaker Supply and all i see is different forms of the same gray color....It's like we are all watching Black-and-White TV in the 50s.....

It's time to invent the color TV.....
 
Alan Molstad said:
That, and to somehow learn to bring some color to steel......not sure how, but blade steel really needs a splash of color in my view.
I look at all the knife steel that is sold on sites like the Texas knifemaker Supply and all i see is different forms of the same gray color....It's like we are all watching Black-and-White TV in the 50s.....

It's time to invent the color TV.....
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Alan,

Johan Gustafsson makes the most colorful blades I know of, http://bladegallery.com/shopexd.asp?id=1356&photo=1&size=b&websess=74771443525810 , but these seem to be surface coatings that would wear away, although I'm not positive about that. As far as I understand it the color has to do with the resonant qualities<?> of the type of atoms and how it effects the light hitting them. The only way to make the color inherent might be to invent some new type of alloy with the correct properties for the color you want, that will still be suitable for a blade.

Take care,
Jose
 
I would hope one day that one of us gets an idea...not just to make a colored cutting blade skin,,,but a better blade thats also colored to the core.

Sorta like.....well...TV....
the way we all know that not only is a color TV sold today better to look at than the TV I owned back in the 50s,,,it's better in EVERY WAY!....
 
I would just like to point out, with all this talk about japanese swords, that the whole reason they came up with the differential heat treatis because of inferior steel, they had to work with the materials they had on hand, also japanese swords broke quite often, even with their differential heat treat
 
thats another goal of mine....
I would hope that I can also learn how to make steel.

There was a website of some guys out in the Minnesota iron range who were blacksmiths who smelted their own steel from local Taconite.

I lost the address of that website, but this is something I would love to go and watch one day to learn.

I remember from the photos on the website that they did everything in a a day while they barbecued and drank beer...(This has me writen all over it...)

I would love to make my own steel...forge it, adjust the carbon, and forge a blade from it...thats what I think a real Bladesmith would want to learn after all...
Anyway, as I learn how to make knives, do forge work, and test knives, the goal for all of this is to learn things that will help me down the line with other forms of steel work that i hope to be into one day.
 
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