sawblade

Ed, I got a hold of a 52" saw blade made by Simonds. I had obliterated the i.d. numbers cutting it into quarters but they told me it was in the 1070-1080 range but with 2% nickle content. Is this gonna make any difference in the standard heat treat for 10 series steel? thanks bruce

Hi Bruce!
Give it a quench test......but I think what you have there will either be very close to 15N20, or possibly even the real mccoy! The 2% nickel will give it a bit more toughness under the hammer, and will lend some ductility to the finished blade, but otherwise you'll find if you use the same heat treat as you would for 1070-1080 it will turn out fine. Even with that being said, I would highly recommend creating one or two test blades of the material just to ensure your going to get the heat treatment results your looking for.
This brings up a point when dealing with recycled materials. If your going to use them, you need to ensure there is enough available to make it worth your time and effort. By this I mean, if you want to make sure your putting out the best blade you can, your going to have to take the time and effort to work out the proper heat treatment for the steel. This can take days or even weeks of time, and can consume a large amount of materials. If plenty of the given material is not available, you can see that you waste a great deal of your precious knifemaking time. This however, is not entirely a bad thing. This is exactly how I learned to work and heat treat so many different types of recycled steel. (I spent the first 5-6 years of my knifemaking career using recycled materials) Today, as my knifemaking time has become more precious, I have settled into 3-4 different types of steel, that I know are consistent, availble, and that I have proven through previous experimentation.

I was told that the steel was 1070 or 1080, he couldn't be more specific without the i.d.numbers.
It sounded as if there were an additional 2%nickel. Would that throw it into another class of steels?
I forged a couple of test blades and they are out in the woods being tested now.
Any idea what Case uses for their plow and shear points? thanks

Bruce,
What Ed is saying is that the steel may well be either 15N20 or L6 (which I'm sure is what he meant by the real McCoy). The two steels are similar in chemical composition.

15N20 has approximately .75% Carbon and 2.0% Nickel
L6 ranges from .70% - .90% Carbon and 2.0% Nickel

He's also saying that you can use the same heat treat that you use on 1070 and 1080 and it should turn out fine. This is of course assuming that whoever made his best guess at the composition was correct.

If you have access to a lot of the blades, it might be worthwhile to send off a small test piece for analysis, so that you'd know exactly what the composition is. I bet Ed could give you an address.

Having to do all this guess work is what makes so many of us move away from "recycled" materials.

[ He comes back and say's... ]

I just saw the question about what Case uses for their plow and shear points. Someone else will have to address that one. I don't have a clue.