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The Newbies Arena Are you new to knife making? Here is all the help you will need.

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  #1  
Old 05-23-2005, 05:54 AM
dudeinthehut dudeinthehut is offline
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Nicholson files

Anyone know the exact type of steel Nicholson files are made of? I have made a couple of blades from them with success. I just want to know that I am giving the best HT that I can.

My guess is W-1 or W-2. Am I right?

Andy


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Old 05-23-2005, 08:53 AM
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Nicholson files are the only files I have heard of that are supposedly ALWAYS made of the same steel and that steel is 1095. Most manufacturers of most any steel product will use what ever steel is available with the required characteristics at the time they make a bulk purchase of steel so you can never really be certain what steel is in a chainsaw bar or a lawn mower blade, etc etc or in most files. This is why I always argue that Newbies are much better oof when they buy their steel so they know what they are getting. But, from the many, many threads concerning making blades from files that have been posted here it is generally believed that Nicholson (especially the large old files) are always 1095 .........


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Old 05-24-2005, 02:38 AM
dudeinthehut dudeinthehut is offline
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Thanks Ray!

(Ifind myself thanking you a lot...)

If I may bounce my HT recipe off of you...
I heat to non magnetic, edge quench in olive oil, file test, temper at about 450F until it turns to a golden straw color. I then use a propane torch to soften the handle area (I often wonder if the propane has the heat required to do this). I have MAPP/OXY capabilities if that's better.

Whadaya think?

Andy


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Old 05-24-2005, 08:08 AM
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Ed Caffrey Ed Caffrey is offline
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Rays correct on the Nicholson files being 1095. Nicholson also makes a file which has the designation "Black Diamond" on it. This is a very different animal from the standard Nicholson files. I don't have all the exact specs right in front of me for the Black diamond files, but I do remember that the carbon content on them is 1.27%

Two things that are tied together when you heat treat steel are time and temp. In order to soften the tangs you'll need a longer duration of heat than you can get with a torch. What normally occurs with the torch is that you achieve a tempered "skin" and the rest of the material remains as tempered. This is the reason that I'm not a big fan of the "soft back draw" method. It is often believed that a higher heat for a shorter duration will work, but it does not. In order for a steels matrix to transform, a specific temp is required for a specific duration of time.


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Old 05-24-2005, 09:17 AM
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Andy,

I would say your heat treatment is basically good but what Ed said about time and temperature is, of course, correct as well. My first impulse is to ask why (for what purpose) you are softening the handle? If it is to facilitate drilling, drill the holes before you harden it or use carbide drills. If it is in the expectation of more toughness then I would point out that the handle is already as tough as the back of the blade because you edge quenched the blade and presumably did not quench the handle. This might be better than having the handle dead soft which not only weakens the knife overall but may form too extreme a differential between the handle and the harder blade material.

As Ed said, the propane torch probably isn't achieving the desired effect. If you want the handle and perhaps the back of the blade softer than your current method can provide then consider clay coating. Coat the handle and/or the back of the blade with furnace cement, let it dry, then heat treat and quench as usual. Remove the clay and temper. Done. By adjusting the thickness of the clay layer you can make the back of the blade and/or handle anywhere from spring hard to dead soft without a torch .......


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Old 05-25-2005, 01:02 AM
dudeinthehut dudeinthehut is offline
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Actually gentlemen, I feel a bit stupid.

In a recent discussion here in the forums, I recieved some advise on how to anneal the same files. I went out and bought a cheap steel toolbox and a bag of Pearlite from walmart. I heated all my files and a few pry bars that a got from the same scrap yard to nonmagnetic. While still red, I jammed them all together down in the Pearlite making sure to keep then in the center. I closed the lid and left them to cool slowly overnight. The advice was that this would anneal the steel.

I am currently making my first knife from this batch. I have not yet HTed the blade, but in grinding, I noticed more complex sparks than I would have liked to see from "softened" steel.

My previous two blades were made after a mere oven temper. Thus, I felt it necessary to torch the backbone for a tougher handle.

Of course, you are both right. With an edge quench, I should not need to soften any part of the knife. The temper should be my last step.

I will have to check to see if my files are 'Black Diamond' or not. If so, this may complicate matters a bit. Furthermore, my current effort is a Loveless style fighter with dual edges on a long slim blade. Edge quenching will not be an option, but I will still only quench the blade and not the handle. Adding to the possible problems is the fact that this one is made from one of those mystery prybars. I know Ray... I know. I have some ATS-34 and some 440C for future projects. I just wanted some more practice on this scrap that I get for pennies before I start grinding my $25-$35 chunks of stainless.

Thanks again guys. Ed, I'll be getting back to you if mine are Black Diamonds. I must say this though; I burned up two carbide bits on one of these files trying to drill a hole. This was after I tempered for one hour at 450F and 3 hours at 550F. That wound up being my personal pocket knife and it still bears the unfinished hole right in the ricasso. Sounds like high carbon to me.

Andy


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Old 05-25-2005, 09:57 AM
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Color me confused, but I don't think the sparks have anything to do with the annealing. The sparks are due to the components of the steel - carbon, manganese, etc. And that doesn't change with annealing/tempering/etc.

If I'm wrong, please jump in and correct me!


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Old 05-25-2005, 10:13 AM
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Jack,

In carbon/alloy type steels there is a difference in the sparks between a hardend and an annealed state. In the hardened state, the steel will give off a "shower" of tiny "very hot" sparks. The same material in an annealed state will have a more open "shower" of sparks with the individual sparks being larger. This is mainly due to the fact that in hardened material your grinding carbides (depending on the variety of steel) whereas the carbides are not there with the material in the annealled state. This may not always be true, depending on the specific steel type, but I have noticed a difference in sparks on just about any carbon/alloy steel between the hardened and annealed states.


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Old 05-25-2005, 01:15 PM
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Thanks, Ed!


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  #10  
Old 05-25-2005, 05:16 PM
mmunds mmunds is offline
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I would also be interrested in the specs on black diamond files. I have made knives for years from files and still in the habbit of scrounging for them. I now buy good blade steel, but would like to know anyway. My favorite bowie is an old black diamond and it is still going strong. It was one of the OLD ones made in canada before nicholson started making them. I have 2 of the newer black diamonds from Nicholson sitting in my pile waiting for me to run out of steel. :evil But it will be awhile since I have over 20 feet of 5160 to work with. After watching Ed's video a few times I got curoius and took a file and broke it in half and forged 2 small identical neck knives from it and processed the one as I regularly do, then treated the other half like Ed does 5160 in his video, triple normalize, triple aneal, and double edge quench then a 3rd quench using clay(I strayed here). The one I processed this way holds a better edge than the first and is just an amazing little blade. Probably the highest quality edge I ever made so far! I am going to play with this process with regular 1095 barstock and see what I can learn. My wife said I could not break the one and claimed it saying "make a new one to break" :confused: I won't argue, she tolerates too much for me to refuse.


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Old 04-26-2016, 05:41 AM
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I'd check my tempering temps closely. Normally 450 will give colors ranging dark tan into purple and over 500 will go dark blue to gray - also not considered a good tempering heat for 1095 series steels.
Olive oil smells good when it's used as a quenchent, however test have shown it is a bit slow for the higher carbon steels like 1095 and the W's and other high eutechtoid (sp) steels.

Totally agree with Ed on the sparking. Make you up some test bars of the same material and leave one annealed and one hardened, you will see the difference. Mark the bars for future ref. I do this with all the steels I use. Especially if you are doing spark comparisons with "mystery" steels. Always make sure you are comparing hardened steel to hardened steel (or annealed steel to annealed steel). Otherwise you are comparing apples to bananas.


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  #12  
Old 04-27-2016, 10:06 AM
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Wow!
This was one of my first threads 11 years ago!
Learned a lot since then.

A few years back (maybe more than a few) I spoke with a technical rep at Nicholson on the phone in order to answer the original question definitively, as something had made me wonder again as to exact steel blend of a Nicholson Black Diamond file.

I explained that I was using old Black Diamonds to make knives, and explained that I was under the impression that these were some form of 1095. The gentleman I spoke with was quick to point out that this was incorrect, but stated that the blend was proprietary and a trade secret. I accepted this and instead asked how I should heat treat it for my purposes.

After a long pause, he told me to heat treat it exactly like W-2. I took him at his word (but I still quench in oil).

It seems like I've told this story somewhere in the forums before...

Thanks for the trip down memory lane!


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Old 04-27-2016, 10:33 AM
samuraistuart samuraistuart is offline
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Hey Andrew! You may know this already, but Aldo received some Black Diamond files here a while back, still has a few for sale on his site.

They are 1.3% carbon, and Rockwell to 72, which I find very surprising. I don't think you can reach 72 C scale with only iron and 1.3% carbon.....must be more alloying to it than that.
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Old 04-27-2016, 04:06 PM
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He didn't say it was W-2. He just advised me to HT that way.


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Old 04-28-2016, 05:19 AM
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Yeah Andy, pretty sure you did, but got no idea where it resides now. Never hurts to refresh that kind of info.

How's things in Wichita? They moved the Knifemakers' Guild Show out to K City and call it ICCE now (in conjunction with ABS). Looks like I'll have a table at this one (had to sit out a year). If you make it over make sure you hunt me up.


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