Murray Carter Book

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I've just bought one too, also available on amazon uk, which was a shock. He really looks the spitting image of Ray Mears on the cover there.:laugh:
 
From a maker perspective, I wouldnt say that there was much of anything revealed that is not pretty much common knowlege. However for less than 20 bucks, it was enjoyable to read, had tons of pics and whenever reading or watching someone who is a master of thier craft, you will always pick some stuff up.
 
From a maker perspective, I wouldnt say that there was much of anything revealed that is not pretty much common knowlege. However for less than 20 bucks, it was enjoyable to read, had tons of pics and whenever reading or watching someone who is a master of thier craft, you will always pick some stuff up.

I was referring to forging and heat treating information in the book. I am curios what you guys (those who heat treat their knives) think of that. I find it interesting how much more complex the HT process done by many in US is compared to how it is done traditionally in Japan (if Carter's method is in indication). In many ways it explains some things I have learned about Japanese knives over the years - why they use steels they use, why san mai construction, etc.

M
 
...I find it interesting how much more complex the HT process done by many in US is compared to how it is done traditionally in Japan...
I wonder how many US makers really do anything complex with their HT on non-stainless.
 
I wonder how many US makers really do anything complex with their HT on non-stainless.

Good question.

Top makers like Kramer, Burke, Thomas (in no particular order) they all do, and I would think most US makers (and heat treating services like Peter's) do at least some type of grain refinement, stress reliving, retained austenite reduction, controlled temperature hardening and tempering, but of course it would depend on a steel used, i. e. W2 (closest to carbon steels Carter uses) requires less complex HT method than 52100 steel.

M
 
I wonder how many US makers really do anything complex with their HT on non-stainless.
Honestly a better question is how many US makers don't over-complicate their heat treatment of non-stainless.
 
I found it an enjoyable read even having never made a knife. Interesting to see how things are done and what goes into the process. It certainly stoked my interest in trying it at some point.
 
Good question.

i. e. W2 (closest to carbon steels Carter uses) requires less complex HT method than 52100 steel.

M

I dont think 52100 has a more complex heat treat, just different soak times...I get best performance out of W2 if it has a 10 min soak at 1450, 52100 does a 10 min at around 1500. All the stress relieving/grain refinement cycles all remain pretty constant. I think if anything W2 is not necessarily more complex...just a lot more stressful lol.
 
I dont think 52100 has a more complex heat treat, just different soak times...I get best performance out of W2 if it has a 10 min soak at 1450, 52100 does a 10 min at around 1500. All the stress relieving/grain refinement cycles all remain pretty constant. I think if anything W2 is not necessarily more complex...just a lot more stressful lol.

You can add a few extra steps to 52100 HT, while W2 is pretty straight-forward - thermocycle, clay-coat, quench, temper (provided you don't have to forge the blank).
 
Im impressed (yeah, really impressed)!

52100 is a different sort of animal, in that you have to do everything right to get a good knife. It dosen't like to move very well under the hammer at it's recommended forging temp and if you over heat it you end up with crap. now then if you really want to prove you are macho/masachistic then you will forge it at no more than 1650 degrees and no less than 1450 and then finish it at 1250 to 1450 at these temps it is almost like forging cold mild steel. but it also seems to be what it takes to make a great knife. it is just very labor intensive in that it is in and out of the fire maybee a hundred times and you really have to beat the heck out of to get it to move. But for mee it is all worth while because I feel that I am making the best knife that I can make. I Have tried all the things that other makers say work great looking for ways to make thing progress faster and easier. Some work most didn't. I will not sacrifice quality or performance to make knives faster/easier.

I start by taking a 2 1/2 to 3 inch square by fiveish inch long piece of 52100 and give it a normalizing treatment in my paragon. Then start forging this chunk of steel into a billet under my little giant power hammer. when breaking this down I heat it to 1850 or so. After I have a billet i then start working the end into the blade shap that I want. the closer I get to the finished blade the lower the heat I use and the more I hammer by hand. When the blade is finish forged I the heat it in the forge to just over nonmagnetic (checked with a magnet) and then quench in room temp texquench a oil. I do this three times and the blade is in the oil for only about 45 seconds so it never really has a chance to fully convert to martinsite but this does really seem to help with grain size reduction. I then heat the blade to non magnetic aagain check with a magnet then hold it in a darkened area and watch the phase transformation that occors as the blade passes from nonmagnetic to magnetic. This is an allotrophic phase change and can be identified by watching the steel go from red to nearly black and the it will actually go back to red again. this happens because the phase change creats creates energy wich manifests itsself in heat which causes the blade to gain color. this change can also be seen in the opposite when heating a blade but it very difficult hard on the eyes because you have to stare into the forge to see it happen. anyway I do this three times and then reheat the blade and let it cool to room temp. I then put the blade into the freezer over night. the next day I take the blade out of the freezer and let it warm to room temp then put it in a cold heat treating oven and heat slowly to 1250 degrees and hold that temp for two hours, then let slow cool back to room temp. the next day I repeat but heat to only 1150 and repeatthe next day but heat to only 1050. I then grind the blade and finish it to a 220 grit finish before hardening. I then harden three times by heating the edge to just over non magnetic and qeuench it in 165 degree texaco type a quenching oil. this is repeated twice more with the blade resting in the freezer between quenches. I then temper to the desired hardness three times again letting the blade rest in the freezer over night between tempering cycles. After all this (it has taken me nine to ten days so far) I then grind the blade to my finished dimensions and work my way upp in grit to a x30 norax belt (1200 grit) At this point the knife is pretty sharp and it it time for some testing. the first thing that I do is to flex the edge full length over a brass rod. the edge must flex over the rod and return to its' original position without chipping and it cannot stay bent. in a thin edge as found in a kitchen knife 52100 will do this at a hardness of 63 hrc if I got the grain reduced to where it should be. After this test it is time to cut stuff. I sharpen the blade on a norton fine india stone. thi stone is fairly coarse about 320 grit but will put a fine enough edge on a knife that it will easily shave hair with no pulling. My favorite test medium is hemp rope. I buy it from a rigging supply house in six hundred foot rolls and I cut up about one roll per year. I take a peace of 1 inch rope about a foot long and separate the three twists ond then start making slicing cut using about 101/2 to 2 inches of the blade and take about 1/8 inch of rope per slice. I count the number of cuts and when the blade slides and will not make a full cut in one slice call it quits. and check for sharpness by feeling the edge and checking to see if the blade will still shave hair. if it does i then try the rope again and continue the count until it slides and no longer feels sharp and will not shave hair. I then compare the number of cuts to what my other knives in the same style did and determine if I want to finish the knife and put on a handle or test further until the blade is destroyed. if the blade is good I the regrind the blade starting at an x30 and finishing with an x5 (3000 grit) thenpolish and hand sand back to 2500 grit the slightly buff. at this point the blade is a freaking razor and I am very caful while I put on the handle and fittings. the last thing I do is to sharpen and sign the knife. I am not going to put my name on anything that I am not 100% happy with.

some of these steps are done one knife at a time and some are done to sereral blades at once. I end up taking most of a month to do one knife from start to finish with from forty to sixty hours spent on each knife. I can make a knife in about five hours but have never done one that I was proud of when trying to hurry so I just don't hurry.

From: http://www.knifeforums.com/forums/printpost.php?tid/862213/
 
I know who wrote that text... there is some controversy for sure in the knife world about this, some think it's heroic, many others think it's hogwash. I will note that a kitchen freezer is not adequate (common knowledge) for cryogenic treatment (transforming retained austenite). I'm hard pressed to understand why a guy with umpteen grinders and hammers, etc whose knives sell for quite high prices wouldn't invest in a cryo setup.

That said, many makers such as Bill Burke, Ed Caffrey, Brian Tomberlin, as well as the author of the above use triple quench and triple draw, among other techniques to get the most out of 52100. I use a fair amount of this steel myself, and triple quench/triple full draw, then soft-back draw it.
 
Didn't check the link. Guess I was wrong!

That's pretty nearly the exact method of another well known maker who has written extensively.

You'll notice he cuts up 600 feet of hemp rope a year. He makes one knife a month. So, in the testing process for each knife, he must cut 50 feet of rope. If separated into three strands as explained, cutting 1/8" more off each time, you could get 288 cuts per foot of rope, or 14,400 cuts for 50 ft. of rope. Gee, that's a lot. Perhaps I've been to strict with my math, let's relax the standards to allow a few more knives per year, maybe some didn't get finished too, maybe some rope got wasted. Let's cut that figure in HALF. 7,200 cuts per knife. Now that sounds realistic.

7,200 cuts at one cut per second would take 120 hours. That's two 60 hour weeks of cutting. With the at least nine or ten days to do the rest of the work, I hope he's getting paid at least $2200 ($10/hr.) for that one knife. And I hope he has a machine to do all that cutting; sounds like a recipe for carpal tunnel to me... 1,440 hours per year of sitting at the bench, cutting.

That said, many makers such as Bill Burke, Ed Caffrey, Brian Tomberlin, as well as the author of the above (who I do owe some knowledge to) use triple quench and triple draw, among other techniques to get the most out of 52100. I use a fair amount of this steel myself, and triple quench/triple full draw, then soft-back draw it. (For sporting/utility knives.)

When I use W2, I'm almost always going for a hamon, so it's triple normalized then single quenched, then double draw. So, a fair bit more simple for me.
 
Who the crap are you talking about? Why is he cutting up so much rope?
 
Got a slow internet connection. I'm trying to edit my posts so they make sense, but the forum software is making it hard.

I'm talking about the author of that long article on the second page about heat treating. I decided to do the math, based on the information given in the description. I thought the results might help to illustrate why some question that extensive type of treatment of 52100.
 
I'm unable to edit given my connection, so to explain the above: I thought originally that the author was Ed Fowler. Then, I was informed that the author was indeed Bill Burke. Then, while editing a later post so that it made sense, a half-edited draft was saved, which also did not fully make sense. Suffice it to say that regardless of editing difficulties I still feel the body of my text to be relevant.
 
Didn't check the link. Guess I was wrong!

That's pretty nearly the exact method of another well known maker who has written extensively.

You'll notice he cuts up 600 feet of hemp rope a year. He makes one knife a month. So, in the testing process for each knife, he must cut 50 feet of rope. If separated into three strands as explained, cutting 1/8" more off each time, you could get 288 cuts per foot of rope, or 14,400 cuts for 50 ft. of rope. Gee, that's a lot. Perhaps I've been to strict with my math, let's relax the standards to allow a few more knives per year, maybe some didn't get finished too, maybe some rope got wasted. Let's cut that figure in HALF. 7,200 cuts per knife. Now that sounds realistic.

7,200 cuts at one cut per second would take 120 hours. That's two 60 hour weeks of cutting. With the at least nine or ten days to do the rest of the work, I hope he's getting paid at least $2200 ($10/hr.) for that one knife. And I hope he has a machine to do all that cutting; sounds like a recipe for carpal tunnel to me... 1,440 hours per year of sitting at the bench, cutting.

That said, many makers such as Bill Burke, Ed Caffrey, Brian Tomberlin, as well as the author of the above (who I do owe some knowledge to) use triple quench and triple draw, among other techniques to get the most out of 52100. I use a fair amount of this steel myself, and triple quench/triple full draw, then soft-back draw it. (For sporting/utility knives.)

When I use W2, I'm almost always going for a hamon, so it's triple normalized then single quenched, then double draw. So, a fair bit more simple for me.

Just a little math edit - 7,200 cuts at one cut per second would take two hours, not 120.
 
Two hours, 120 hours, what's the difference?

Actually, one decimal point makes a BIG difference... so that's two hours per knife of cutting, or a whopping total of 24 hours a year cutting. My foot is now in my mouth!

Nevermind about that then. I do really wish there was some sort of totally neutral, comprehensive cutting test service with public boards, so we could all check whose knife scored how many points in what categories of cut. Sort of like the MMA ring was for martial arts- finally a public proving ground for HT methods and edge geometry.
 
There was a guy who went to a bank to get a loan for setting up such a cutting test service. I believe the rejection letter just said "Nerd!" on it.
 
It's acknowledged by those who know me that I'm a nerd...

This is thread drift though. I'd like to read the Carter book as well. I'd really like it if he disclosed a good way to buy paper steels in the USA!
 
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