What’s just fine?

[Kevin R. Cashen]

I didn't even know they had cameras back then.

That is a puzzle isn't it? Yet you can rent the movie. Another really odd thing is how much Conan looks like California's governor. Perhaps the reason we cannot seem to be able to duplicate the irrefutable cleaving of a machine gun barrel is because we have left out the slave quench? But then anything is possible with a katana. Hey! Maybe we could cut a BB gun barrel with one quenched in the turkey!:thumbup:

 

[steelshaper]

When I found this forum I realized how little I knew about what I was doing. I am still not using salts though I could go and use, with his help, another makers salts. My knives are not even close to what I can imagine them to be. This lack in abalities and tools is a huge source of stress and also a motivator. For these reasons I have a love hate relationship with this forum. Look I could stop making knives start saving my money and buy the best tools I can find and then make sub par knives until I learn how to use all those tools. Or I can keep pluggin along and grow as a maker as my tools and shop grows. Maybe I will never be able to make knives at the level I want to. I dont know!

What I do know is every maker out there had a first knife and a second and a third....... Some makers reach a plateau and stop growing, and some will keep pushing the envelope. Both types have a good enough. One is, "this knife is as good as I can make it but the next will be better". The other type says "I make knives as good as I can and ever will". Either way you must decide for yourself where your good enough is. Some people will try and give you their good enough, chances are they simply want company at their level or justifiacation.

currently my "good enough" is unatainable from my pit of dispair

Sorry for all my abstract nonsense. carry on

 

[Kevin R. Cashen]

...We heard it from Darwin, Freud and Mendel - and we still respect their penetration of the horizon as great gifts to science. I sure hope we all live to see our 'facts' evolve. ...

But Darwin, Fr..., well Darwin and Mendel, offered explanations and sound logical reasons behind their positions, thus we have the opportunity of watching them evolve, the world didn't just take their word on it, especially in the case of Darwin. When has evolution or genetics been abandoned as false? I mean aside from the obvious unresolvable differences with religion, which is not too far removed from some of this topic, i.e. the differences in between the need for an explanation or the contentment to just believe. Neither explanations have been supplanted but instead have been supplemented with more facts as we learn them, but the foundations seem sound. Dogma is often abandoned but sound facts are expanded, thus evolution of facts is evidence of their strength not their weakness.

You know I regret typing that last paragraph already I can see about a dozen ways for this thread to spin out from it into any number of deadhorse topics that I have seen so many times here that I "could go out in the rain and stomp a mud puddle dry." Gosh wouldn't yet another science vs tradition thread be novel and refreshing:thumbdn:

I would however like to ask you folks a favor. Please stop thanking me for being a pain in the ass! And stop apologizing everytime I get a belly full of something. I really don't rate an apology any more than anybody else and with all the nonsense on the internet we could do nothing but continually apologize to everybody who has a belly full of something. All I am asking is that you do yourselves the favor of forgoing this cyclic self abuse with these same topics that never go anywhere but down the exact same non productive paths.

Fact- there will always be anal retentive types who will get their panties in a bind when they cannot use exactly the right materials for them to satisfy their control freak needs in heat treatment.

Fact- there will always be people who will want to use bacon drippings, weasel pee, etc.. for quenching and no ammount of information will change that desire as it is driven by an entirely different need than the first group.

Fact- neither of these groups will ever convince the other of the merits of their choices, it is apparently one of those left brain, right brain things. This conversation has never ended in a different outcome or any conversions from one group to the other, only hard feelings over what substance one sticks hot steel into:jerkit:*.

So why do this to ourselves? Why bother? Why not talk about sticking hot blades into turkeys? It has to be more productive.


*hey I finally got to use the jerkit emoticon

 

[atakach]

*hey I finally got to use the jerkit emoticon

damn it, ive longed to use that thing......i almost wanna just post one to say ive used them all.


if not a turkey, how about a big dead carp, that cool it quick no??:barf::barf:

why dont we argue what is the best animal for quenching, as im sure they all have varying body temps, which could effect the hyper euctectoid, cubic facceted molecules that are confused as to why they were shoved into a carcass ....ah hell i dont know what any of it means...im a :jerkit:

hey i used it wwhhhoooo hooooo

 

[Kevin R. Cashen]

Some people will try and give you their good enough, chances are they simply want company at their level or justifiacation...

This is actually a very astute observation. Some want as many others doing what they do so they can feel justified in where they decided to stop, others want as many others struggling for almost unobtainable goals in order to feel more justified in all the effort they expend. But it really should be up to each of us to determine at what height we need to set our own goals and we owe it to ourselves to get as much objective information as we can for making that determination.

I personally decided long ago that every knife I make must be an improvement in some way over the last one. Because of that I am happy to say that I am now making the best knives I have ever made and am confident that I the next ones will be better. If this progression ever levels out I will retire and find something else that I can continually learn and improve my skills on. Thus perfection has never been my goal, since that would be the end of my career, after all what comes after perfection? Fortunately all human beings are quite safe from perfection.

 

[butcher_block]

if not a turkey, how about a big dead carp, that cool it quick no??:barf::barf:

i thought carp was a more water quench since it was a fish and the turkey was more like oil i think beef = forced air

 

[Kevin R. Cashen]

...why dont we argue what is the best animal for quenching...

Dead or alive? Some may merit more consideration just for the opportunity to dispatch a nasty critter!

 

[atakach]

Dead or alive? Some may merit more consideration just for the opportunity to dispatch a nasty critter!

Well considering ive heard an aggitated quench can up the rc by a point or so, alive may give you that aggitation.

i thought carp was a more water quench since it was a fish and the turkey was more like oil i think beef = forced air

aahhh yes, i believe thats why they water quench in japan.....lots of carp there

all depending on where you stick it, could be considered forced air, and not exactly the air you wanna breath so surely where a mask....and it has to be 3m bought off of a specific manufacture or its junk....ok i truely am a :jerkit: (wow 2 jerk its in one day and the same thread)


boy i can see we'll all be singing Kum-bi-ya in no time....ok gotta get to the back to the shop, i have lots more to screw up this evening

 

[sunshadow]

That is a puzzle isn't it? Yet you can rent the movie. Another really odd thing is how much Conan looks like California's governor. Perhaps the reason we cannot seem to be able to duplicate the irrefutable cleaving of a machine gun barrel is because we have left out the slave quench? But then anything is possible with a katana. Hey! Maybe we could cut a BB gun barrel with one quenched in the turkey!:thumbup:

I have a .22 barrel that no longer has a gun around it I could bring to Ashokan for cutting tests

-Page

 

[AcridSaint]

I think what Karl was getting is at is that vegetable oil is designed for cooking, ATF is designed as hydraulic fluid that happens to lubricate and quenching oil is designed to quench steel. It doesn't matter what your steel was designed to do, so long as it meets the quenching criteria of the media you're using.

I like to think that what Kevin is trying to say is that you owe to your self and your customers to use the best product available. He's not going to tell you what that is, he's going to let you determine it for yourself.

That's what I'm getting out of the thread.

 

[stephanfowler]

ok mr fowler,

just curious is the turkey going to be room temp? right out of the fridge? should the turkey be heated up to 130 degrees? and how big of a bird... thats got to matter right? and stuffing or no?

i cant wait

jake

It will be straight out of the refrigerator, so around 45F

about a 14Lb bird

But then anything is possible with a katana.

Now see, this would have been another good opportunity for the jerkit smilie...

Thus perfection has never been my goal, since that would be the end of my career, after all what comes after perfection? Fortunately all human beings are quite safe from perfection.

Branching out to a new style comes after perfection, at least, that's what I hear.....

 

[Kevin R. Cashen]

I think what Karl was getting is at ...
...It doesn't matter what your steel was designed to do, so long as it meets the quenching criteria of the media you're using...

I just let it go because I was certain that somebody would catch it, but there are several steels including a couple listed that were designed to be used in cutting and slitting type of operations quite similar but in a more intense way as a knife blade. One of the reasons that I chose both L6 and O1 is their years of use in industrial cutting and slitting applications, one for its abrasion resistance in industrial slicing and slitting applications, the other for its shock resistance in high speed cutting of many of the same materials. The 10xx and W series were old school general purpose steels with many applications similar to cutlery in mind, but most of the alloy steels are used in applications that they were not specifically designed for but are well suited for. It would be very impractical for steel mills to run a separate chemistry specifically for every specific application so instead they base it upon properties and allow the end user to match things up. For a clear example of this go to Carpenter Tech Center and study their steel selection charts based upon wear and toughness according to oil, water or air hardening. The only exception mentioned thus far is 52100 which was made specifically for bearings.

Go to Carpenter and select your steel based upon what you want your knife to do and how you want to heat treat it. Say camp knife, and look on their chart on the "oil" column and then go across from total wear towards toughness until you reach the level of wear strength versus toughness you want and you may just choose RDS (oil tough), also known as L6 . Your next stop may be a seller of industrial quenchants, where you will find a list of oils from fast to medium with different qualities based upon your needs. They are very good about supplying pages and pages of information on choosing exactly the right quenchant for your application, and I strongly suggest rolling up your sleeves and reading it before just stopping into an internet forum in order to ask for advice to blindly follow. I read comments far too often about how folks wished they were smart enough to follow my posts, but allow me to let you in on a secret- I am not that smart! I just decided there are better sources of technical information than Blade magazine and other bladesmiths. And all you have to do to have all that information yourself is read that available data and quit listening to other people who also refuse to read that data!

I like to think that what Kevin is trying to say is that you owe to your self and your customers to use the best product available. He's not going to tell you what that is; he's going to let you determine it for yourself.

That's what I'm getting out of the thread.

Well I hope Jake is getting what he wants, it is his thread. I am saying what I have always said, we all owe it to ourselves and to our craft to get off our lazy behinds and do our own independent research and stop listening to the same old garbage for our decision making. Somehow somewhere along the line bladesmiths decided the only source we needed for technical information were other bladesmiths, whose most in-depth analysis consists of “do this it works just fine.” This inbreeding of information has resulted in many “techniques” that would only make sense in a shamanistic rite. After we got used to suckling that toxic teat the internet only made things worse in some ways since it provided a whole udder full of toxic teats available 24/7. I guess with that analogy I could be accused of saying that the online knifemaking community is packed with boobs full of crap, and I doubt I would deny it.

What draws people to a “bladesmith question and answer forum?” They want to smith blades and are looking for input from people who specialize in smithing blades. However bladesmiths are the ultimate jacks of all trades and may be able to give you the best advice on shaping a blade with a hammer and grinder, but they are frightfully ignorant on anything that doesn’t concern their central interest as is evident in apathetic answers such as “it works just fine”. Making a knife involves so many diverse disciplines that there is no way for one individual to become an expert in all of them in one lifetime. So wouldn’t it make sense that if you want insightful information about quenching that you go to people devoted to studying and making quenchants, and print loads of free information about it?

Hhmmm…you realize this is just the old “search button” complaint on a larger scale don’t you?

 

[Kevin R. Cashen]

...aahhh yes, i believe thats why they water quench in japan.....lots of carp there...

Uh Oh! Now you have to go commit sepuku! You broke the #1 rule in talking about Japanese blades- Thou must always use obscure Japanese terminology for every trivial little detail! You have now dsgraced yourself as an ingnorant Gaijin unworthy of discussing the most holy katana! KOI! Koi, not carp! Although they look like carp, smell like carp and suck slime like carp, they are koi, not lowly carp.

 

[wnease]

i think they folded their koi into intricate patterns, then liquified them and added salt until the solution would float a pheasant's egg that was laid under the porch of a zen monk

 

[Kevin R. Cashen]

...Now see, this would have been another good opportunity for the jerkit smilie...

Oh no, that is where you have to be careful with the most powerful "jerkit" emoticon, it must be wielded carefully. We could just use it whenever, but we have seen too many times how its hasty use can lead to a serious incident tantamount to human rights violations. Are you a mad man? Using that emoticon in the same sentence as "katana" could incite full scale riots! There were people murdered in Europe when a cartoonist drew Mohamed, what do you think would happen if the katanaphiles saw the "jerkit"

 

[strahd71]

Mr. cashen,

i didnt really get what i wanted..... i've still got questions, but oh well

but hey the turkey thing is cool

jake

 

[sunshadow]

i think they folded their koi into intricate patterns, then liquified them and added salt until the solution would float a pheasant's egg that was laid under the porch of a zen monk

Didn't you know the original pronunciation of the sword's name was "KoiTama" (art made of mutant looking oversized goldfish) before some ignorant gaiijin phonetically smeared it into the current pronunciation "Ka-Tana" meaning sword of mythical properties

-Page

 

[AcridSaint]

Hi - just to be completely clear, I only meant to infer that the application of the steel doesn't change its heat treating properties (although it may change how you choose to heat treat it). So, if W2 is a fast quenching steel, it will still be a fast quenching steel when I shape it into a knife. Yes, it may be an "oil hardening" steel because of the thickness of my blade, but it still demands a heat treat within specifications.

When reading the quote that Kevin extrapolated, I felt that I may not have been clear enough in my post.

 

[AcridSaint]

I posted earlier before I finished writing - I don't have cylindrical probes or the ability to do a meaningful cross-section on a 10cm part and see if olive oil worked better than pigs blood or whatever, so I just try to go by the testing that was done for me by industry.

 

[sharpeknives]

When will the turkey quench take place?