Thread: Steel Ordering
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Old 04-17-2017, 08:46 AM
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Ray Rogers Ray Rogers is offline
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You're obviously new to this so for that reason as much as anything else I would say .250 thickness in your blade stock is far too much. Very few knives are made that thick and for good reason - they don't cut well. And there is no need for steel that thick to make the blade 'stronger' if that's what you're thinking, a proper heat treatment will do that. Get .125 or .187 stock depending on the knife you want to make.

Even if you really do intend to make large knives from .250 stock I would suggest that you don't do it yet. What you need to be doing right now is going through the entire process of making a knife start to finish as quickly and cheaply as you can. The fastest and most economical way to do that is to make small knives, say 4" blades. Those are the most common knives so if they work out you won't have any trouble finding people who want them and if they don't you won't be out much. Repetition is your friend here.

And don't get carried away trying to make them fancy right now. No mirror polished blades, no fancy handle materials. I promise you that if you polish that first blade and try to make a 'showy' knife that a year from now you'll look at it and see a pig wearing lipstick.

Make one knife at a time, start to finish. Concentrate on fit and finish and perfecting your heat treatment. Test these knives hard to learn how to improve them and then break the first few of them to see the grain in the steel. See if you can find an old worn out Nicholson file and break it - that's what you want your broken blade to look like....


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