home knife making: monosteel vs cladding

hey guys! im diving in deeper and deeper in the process of knife making at home. i'm wondering, if i have a bar of 1084 steel that i cut and hammer out, is a form of cladding necessary(or even possible)?

you need a forge and hot-metal-working tools to laminate (forge weld) a blade with cladding.
the cladding is generally a non-hardening iron/mild-steel which allows you to differentially
harden the core to a core-hardness that would risk blade integrity in a mono-steel
construction. the side benefits are easier to thin laminates for routine maintenance.

whether or not that a laminated construction is desirable or not is really up to you.

You don't ever "need" cladding. You can temper for max hardness and have a mono blade that hold up just fine. The cladding allows easier straightening after quench. That's it's biggest merit imo.

Cladding has its advantages and there are good reasons for Japanese to make san-mai knives, but as Robin said, it is not 'necessary' to make a good knife.

You'll need a forge capable of reaching forge welding temperatures and you'll need to flux your billets to get them to weld. You might find it easier to simply buy pre-laminated steel.

Good 1084 can make a very nice kitchen knife on its own. I've bought 1084 from a good source in 0.125" thick stock and didn't have problems warping. I've fixed other carbon steel warp by counterbending in clamps during tempering, should work fine with 1084 as well.

You can differentially harden your 1084 by either edge quenching or claying the spine. But even non-differentially hardened monosteel 1084 should be fine a kitchen knife. It's more an issue with swords as it's preferable to have a sword blade be tough and simply bend and be somewhat useful rather than the blade shatter or break and be useless. You're not going to be treating a kitchen knife in the same manner, so it's not a big deal. If you run your 1084 at HRc 63-64 it's not going to shatter but the edge may be a little chippy, something that wouldn't be changed by cladding anyhow.

Edited to add: One advantage of cladding is if you clad a carbon core with a stainless cladding. That can make for easier maintenance as the cladding will be stain resistant.

As the others have said: cladding is possible, but not necessary.

I dunno how many of you have tried it, but forge welding by hand is a b1tch. I need a hotter forge... Screw you bastards that make it look easy!

I just recently found out about the steel bars that already come in san-mai construction. Cool, so the cladding is not necessary but there are definitely benefits from it. Thanks for clearing this up for me guys!