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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 01-23-2014, 09:13 PM
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cbsmith111 cbsmith111 is offline
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Wide Stock

I've been wanting to try making some modern style full tang tomahawks. Although there is an abundance of reasonably priced, high quality cutlery steel on the market it is a little harder to find in the widths I need.

I need at least 1/4x8x15. Precision ground would be better. It needs to harden to a reasonable level, but doesn't need as much abrasion resistance as a good knife. Obviously toughness is a major factor. The tool steels are a little more common in these sizes, but are a little expensive. It would be good to have something cheap but still functional to experiment with at the start. Any suggestions on what/where? Thanks.
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Old 01-23-2014, 10:01 PM
argel55 argel55 is offline
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Aldo Bruno
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Old 01-23-2014, 10:03 PM
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Midwinter Midwinter is offline
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This may be a decent chance to try some reclaimed steel (e.g. old thick saw blades) or since the tang does not need to be anything near hard you may think of welding a head onto a mid tang.
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Old 01-24-2014, 06:16 AM
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**It would be good to have something cheap but still functional to experiment with at the start.**
Kind of rules out hardened percision ground steel.
Midwinter's suggestion sounds like a pretty good way to go. Just pic out old big ones that have the teeth ground into the blade body (not inserts). Remove all the rust/patina and paint with FeCl to show up any hairline stress cracks so that you can work around them. Have fun cutting them up, you will go thorough a lot of cutoff disc in a side grinder or have the blanks cut by a machine shop with lazer or waterjet. Cutting torch is ok, but wasteful with a lot of cleanup grinding.


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Old 01-24-2014, 11:38 AM
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The steel baron does have lots of wide stock. Thanks. 1075 would probably work just fine. I've also looked at some 1045 elsewhere which is very affordable. I know it won't harden near to the point of grades with higher carbon content. I know there are some swords and axes made from it though, and like I said edge retention is far from the most important factor. I mean this to be a utility and breaching tool that has to stand up to serious abuse.

It also seems that anything like this is pretty much impossible to buy precision ground. Any steel I've used for knives I've bought precision ground, and I've never even attempted to use anything else. I'm sure the service is available after the fact and probably locally, but this may bring the cost back up to a problem level. Any advice on that issue?
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Old 01-24-2014, 12:20 PM
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Ray Rogers Ray Rogers is offline
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Take your steel to a machine shop and ask them to surface grind it. They will probably charge a minimum hourly rate but it doesn't take long to do that job so the more steel you take the cheaper it will be per piece....


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Old 01-27-2014, 01:22 PM
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I was assuming it would be cost prohibitive, but ill have to check it out.
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