Will it work?

you can but if your going cheap why not go to a local junk yard and pick up some leaf springs off an old truck

cut with a hack saw or angle grinder to workable sizes and build a fire and put the pieces in it and leave them till the fire goes out then youll have anealed steel to work with and use the files on the steel to shape and sharpen your new blades once you get what you consider done take some wood and burn it till you get some nice red coals put the fire out and wash the coals then you have homemade charcoal and then make a homemade forge with an air supply i use a shop vac that blows out with a dimer switch to control the air flow and a pipe with a buch of holes for the air to enter the forge heat to nonmagnetic and quench in tranny fluid
 
i use an old disgarded propane tank for my forge body and muddy clay dirt mixed with ashe for the insulation around the air pipe
 
the problem with saw and files is they are not necessarily steels good for knives. files can be low carbon that has been case hardened and saws can be low carbon with welded on teeth among other problems. even if it is good steel, the file will be hard to work with, hard to temper correctly. leaf springs are almost always 5160 and will be much better for learning on. and by time you put the effort into making a knife, spending some money on a piece of known steel will be much better than making a knife that could fail. just my opinion.
-Lou
 
3wolves said:
Can I use files or thick saw blades for making knives?
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You can use Power hacksaw blades made of M2 steel, They commonly come as thick as .100 inch and about an inch wide. There are people who sell worn out blades on the web cheap. M2 makes an excelent blade.
 
i think that a good file makes a great knife. and auto springs are thick and hardened. thay might also have stress fractures which might show up after you put tons of hrs into it. i dont know why people dislike files. just because you dont know forshure what steel thay are made from does not mean thay make bad knives. i put the file in my oven @ 400f for 2-4 hrs. makes a great blade. i have a hallow ground dagger blade made from a file that i can bend quite a bit and it springs right back. saw blades ?
 
I'm with JT on the files, but I would use only Nicholson brand. There is no question of Nicholson being high carbon, and they seem to be superior to 1095, by my testing. A simple anneal will allow drilling with cobalt bits, and can then be filed with relative ease. They are easily heat treated, and a simple temper will produce a very good, edge holding blade. I often see where many believe them to be 1095, but I made blades from both for over ten years, and there is a difference. Not only in performance, but in annealing, drilling, and ease of heat treating them. For me, In the case of making fire strikers, the Nicholson steel takes a water quench much better than 1095, in that they seldom crack. I believe them to be W-1, or maybe W-2. I don't know, but I am convinced there is a difference.
 
3wolves said:
Can I use files or thick saw blades for making knives?
Click to expand...


As has already been stated, you can make good knives from a file (if solid high carbon) or a M2 power hacksaw blade (not bimetal blade or plain carbon, it has to be solid M2).

The advantages of using the M2 power hacksaw blade is

A: it is M2, great stuff
B: It is already properly heat treated
C: you can get it hot while grinding it without ruining the temper. A file would loose its temper as soon as you got it hot enough to run colors, so you would have to add heat treat to your project, which I'm guessing you would like to forgo on your first stab.


M2 power hacksaw blades are very hard and very abrasion resistant. That type of steel works best in a fairly small, thinly ground precision cutter. It can handle a very acute sharpening angle, so it can make a wicked sharp cutter, and it holds an edge very well. You don't want it too thick at the edge or it will be a pill to sharpen, so you have to grind it thin.

Take your time and grind it thin.
 
Thanks guys I think Ill use the file, I already have a nicolson one. Im going to shape the blade on a grinder. If I keep The metal cool enough so colors dont run, will it ruin the heat treatment or do I have to anneal it and retreat it?
 
As long as you keep the metal cool it will be ok. Make a pass or 2 then dip in water to cool . Take your time,go slow, and after you finish put it in the oven and bake it for 2 hours at 400 deg F to temper it . Will make a good knife.
 
3wolves said:
Thanks guys I think Ill use the file, I already have a nicolson one. Im going to shape the blade on a grinder. If I keep The metal cool enough so colors dont run, will it ruin the heat treatment or do I have to anneal it and retreat it?
Click to expand...

Do not where gloves as you grind it. Gloves are unsafe, as they can be grabbed by a grinder and pull your fingers and/or hand into the grinder, severely maiming you being a possibility. Also, without gloves, you will have much more feel as to the heat that you're building up. I would try to hold the blade in such a manner that your fingers make contact near where the heat is being generated, so that you instantly feel it getting warm and can dunk it in water.

If you turn it blue, do not just assume that by grinding the color back off that you've gotten rid of the ruined metal. It's still ruined underneath and too late. Go very, very slow. I gave up on trying to grind hard very quickly, and learned how to heat treat. I annealed, then profiled and beveled. I then normalized, hardened and tempered. It's much easier to grind and drill, using this method. In addition, you'll learn more by doing the heat treating. There are many threads and tutorials here on Bladeforums on how to build a forge very inexpensively. You won't regret building one!
 
temper the file befor you do any grinding. if you drop it you dont want it to break. has any one ever sent in a file to be tested. if theres some intrest ill have one tested.
 
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