WillC
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- Jul 9, 2011
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I have been working on this on and the forging and heat treatment of this particular shape in this particular steel on and off for about three years.:bigeek:
It started with a Parer idea based on an old Sheffield pattern, but with a sweep to the heel rather than the huge chunk of metal at the heel of this design of sheffield knife you will be familiar with.
Mean time I have been playing with the forging process and die shapes to get these as close to all forged as possible for larger knives. This is not a huge knife but is a good test piece to base future efforts.
The steel is a very high carbon with tiny amounts of chromium and manganese, it is a shallow hardening steel and gets extremely hard, with the heat treatment I have developed it is edge stable at almost full hardness. This example is 65/66hrc!! And shows some nice edge flex, It would chip against hard steel or grit, but it would chip clean with no distortion. There is differential hardening using clay. I wanted to take this test piece to the limit, but I would fear substantial chance of tip loss at this hardness, commercial pieces will be a little lower at 64/65. Though I wanted to test its usability at its absolute limit. I can tell you it was an ass to hand rub!
The Shape is entirely forged to begin with, blade shape, taper, and bevels, this all helps with a shallow hardening steel all helps in the heat treatment, though hard to achieve, (why Ive been so long working it out).
So this is still a working process, Larger knives will have fuller handles from larger stock, the parer versions are very cute..... Unfortunately I broke the parer example on the hardness tester, which gave me a nice chance to see the lovely grain I have achieved with the steel,
Handle on the test piece is Maple one side and spalted tamarind o the other, kind off offcuts two for one special.
Anyway here are far to many pictures. This is my test piece on which to base future work with design tweaks... not for resale.
Told you there was allot of pics.....was finding it rather photogenic:laugh:
Blade length on this one is 140mm 35mm tall.
Thanks for looking and commenting your feedback.:detective:
It started with a Parer idea based on an old Sheffield pattern, but with a sweep to the heel rather than the huge chunk of metal at the heel of this design of sheffield knife you will be familiar with.
Mean time I have been playing with the forging process and die shapes to get these as close to all forged as possible for larger knives. This is not a huge knife but is a good test piece to base future efforts.
The steel is a very high carbon with tiny amounts of chromium and manganese, it is a shallow hardening steel and gets extremely hard, with the heat treatment I have developed it is edge stable at almost full hardness. This example is 65/66hrc!! And shows some nice edge flex, It would chip against hard steel or grit, but it would chip clean with no distortion. There is differential hardening using clay. I wanted to take this test piece to the limit, but I would fear substantial chance of tip loss at this hardness, commercial pieces will be a little lower at 64/65. Though I wanted to test its usability at its absolute limit. I can tell you it was an ass to hand rub!
The Shape is entirely forged to begin with, blade shape, taper, and bevels, this all helps with a shallow hardening steel all helps in the heat treatment, though hard to achieve, (why Ive been so long working it out).
So this is still a working process, Larger knives will have fuller handles from larger stock, the parer versions are very cute..... Unfortunately I broke the parer example on the hardness tester, which gave me a nice chance to see the lovely grain I have achieved with the steel,
Handle on the test piece is Maple one side and spalted tamarind o the other, kind off offcuts two for one special.
Anyway here are far to many pictures. This is my test piece on which to base future work with design tweaks... not for resale.
Told you there was allot of pics.....was finding it rather photogenic:laugh:
Blade length on this one is 140mm 35mm tall.
Thanks for looking and commenting your feedback.:detective: