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I would rather julienne my manhood on a mandoline than do this.


I admire his tenacity though.
 
A lot of people have made nice knives with a file jig or even freehand. I think matus has made some nice ones with files before he got his belt grinder. Even if you have machinery, there's a lot of hand sanding involved if you want this kind of finish.
 
LOL, but I meant no disrespect to the maker, in fact just the opposite. I simply couldn't imagine going through that myself, I don't have what it takes.
 
The filing jig he made is idential in concept to the sharpening jig he bought. I wonder why people don't make their own sharpening jigs. Turn a stone on its side and ziptie it to a filing jig and go to town.
 
His heat treat was WAAAAAAY sub-optimal for O-1. All that work by hand only to skimp on the thing that matters most....shame.
-Mark
 
chiffonodd said:
pretty sure I threw out my back just watching it
Click to expand...

I'm currently removing the fingerguard from an old sabatier and going to rehandle (and have been doing every so often for the last 12 months) using only files... and god i could never imagine doing that much work.
 
He got the heat treat to non-magnetic, not perfectly optimal but, won't be that bad.
I think it's a fantastic job.
well done
 
Oh, I think he did a great job....until he heated the TIP to non-magnetic (about 1420 degrees F) and left the rest of the blade cooler. He's going to have a mix of structures in that knife that will have varying properties...none of which will be any better than a knife made from, say, 1084, since all those alloying elements that make O1 perform well were never allowed to go into solution without a proper soak at temperature, and that's ignoring the carbon that wasn't allowed to reach the point of transformation, which is about 50 degrees F HIGHER than the point of non-magnetism.
-Mark
 
That forge is too small to heat treat anything bigger than paring knife
 
Spotty heat treat aside, good video and thanks to the OP for sharing.
 
How does one even really accuratly measure temps that high, without using 1 of those heat treat oven...
 
The magnet will help you understand you've passed a certain temp but that's it. That's why the 10xx steels are favoured by people with no access to high tech tools, they are forgiving and don't require super accurate temps to get decent results. Ive read that a lot of pro will still use 1084 and 1095 because with the proper heat treat they perform really well. Still, you need to heat the blade evenly such that the entire blade is non magnetic, not just the tip.
 
I've seen some amazing footage of a Japanese maker who can, if the video is to be believed, gauge by eye within a couple of celcius....but he's been at it his entire life. Tests (and this is anecdotal, I have no info on the who/where/when) have shown that even experienced smiths can only judge within a couple hundred degrees with any regularity. With those things in mind, absent a heat treating oven, one CAN install kiln pyrometers in a gas forge. I use two, one at the top a little forward of center where my burner enters, and one at the rear wall. This at least gives me an idea of the temps at which I'm moving metal....which is something a lot of people don't realize. Different steels have different recommended forging temperatures as well as temperatures for hardening. These forging temps allow for ease of movement under the hammer, reduction of grain growth and avoidance of induced stress. Jessf is right...1084 makes a lot of folks look good!
-Mark
 
PolishAvenger said:
I've seen some amazing footage of a Japanese maker who can, if the video is to be believed, gauge by eye within a couple of celcius....but he's been at it his entire life. Tests (and this is anecdotal, I have no info on the who/where/when) have shown that even experienced smiths can only judge within a couple hundred degrees with any regularity.
Click to expand...

I believe that the eye test experiment was run at a bladesmithing conference (details are on one of the bladesmithing forums, can't remember which, probably something Kevin Cashen wrote) so I don't feel it's representative of the true capabilities a good smith has to judge by eye under controlled conditions in their own shop, running their own forge under their own known standard conditions. The color we see is dependent on the ambient light, so it's understandable to misjudge colors some place that's not your home shop.

If the cutting edge to a certain height is hard, it will make a decent kitchen knife. Some makers run a hamon quite low, so from the spine down isn't full hardness, perfectly fine if you never sharpen the blade short enough to reach the softer steel, IMO.

As an aside, I love 1084. :biggrin:
 
PolishAvenger said:
I've seen some amazing footage of a Japanese maker who can, if the video is to be believed, gauge by eye within a couple of celcius....but he's been at it his entire life. Tests (and this is anecdotal, I have no info on the who/where/when) have shown that even experienced smiths can only judge within a couple hundred degrees with any regularity. With those things in mind, absent a heat treating oven, one CAN install kiln pyrometers in a gas forge. I use two, one at the top a little forward of center where my burner enters, and one at the rear wall. This at least gives me an idea of the temps at which I'm moving metal....which is something a lot of people don't realize. Different steels have different recommended forging temperatures as well as temperatures for hardening. These forging temps allow for ease of movement under the hammer, reduction of grain growth and avoidance of induced stress. Jessf is right...1084 makes a lot of folks look good!
-Mark
Click to expand...

yes, and steel snobbery makes some folks look bad.
 
milkbaby said:
I believe that the eye test experiment was run at a bladesmithing conference (details are on one of the bladesmithing forums, can't remember which, probably something Kevin Cashen wrote) so I don't feel it's representative of the true capabilities a good smith has to judge by eye under controlled conditions in their own shop, running their own forge under their own known standard conditions. The color we see is dependent on the ambient light, so it's understandable to misjudge colors some place that's not your home shop.

If the cutting edge to a certain height is hard, it will make a decent kitchen knife. Some makers run a hamon quite low, so from the spine down isn't full hardness, perfectly fine if you never sharpen the blade short enough to reach the softer steel, IMO.

As an aside, I love 1084. :biggrin:
Click to expand...

Point taken! I'm on board with the idea that smiths do their best work at their home forges.

While I'm not a big fan of hamon or differential hardening/tempering on kitchen oriented blades, you're right.

1084 is a helluva steel....If memory serves, Schrade used it for about 100 years or so. I have a few sticks of it left from that final shipment that New Jersey Steel Baron got hold of.:thumbsup:

-Mark
 
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