Stock Removal Knife - Steel Recommendation and Heat treating

Obiously I'm new to knife making... I'm doing the three step method - Making kits first, then doing some stock removal, then on to forging. I've done the kit deal and had fun so I'm on to a few practice blades. I've done them out of whatever scrap I can get from work, just practicing the actual process since I don't know what I have my hands on.

I know everyone has their own preferance of steel and heat treating for both removal and forging. I've read a lot about 5160 for forging and a lot of differnet methods of heat treating.

First, is 5160 a good steel for stock removal. I'll be doing mid sized knives for hunting and skinning.

And in all of my readings on the interent in all of the differnet kinds of heat treating, most of the time they don't go into detale on how they got to the heat treating stage, removal or forging. Plus I know part of forging includes heat treating.

So now that I have rambled for so long, can someone point me in the right general direction, maybe a good web site. I know some personnal preferance will be involved in everyone's responce and I'm not trying to start a discussion on what everyone sees as the correct method, just trying to get started.

Thanks

Any steel that can be forged you can also do stock removal with. The main thing is finding the stock you want to use. Most that do stock removal go with 440C or ATS34, one of the main reason is the choice in material sizes and thicknesses.
Admiral Steel has the largest selection of steel that I know of. www.admiralsteel.com/prod...lades.html With the stainless steels you'll have to send out for heat treat, with the tool steels you can do your self. Have fun...Ray

Welcome to the forums. Technically, 5160 is suitable for either method. It is cost effective and readily available. However, there are a couple of things to think about since you will be using the stock removal method at first.

5160 generally comes in its virgin state from the mill complete with a nice thick coat of scale. Also, the bars a generally in 1/4" thickness or more. And it's not that unusual to purchase a bar that is not perfectly straight. For your purposes, you might find it easier to start out with a clean precision ground steel in something like 1/8" to 3/16" thickness.

I believe O1 would be a good candidate for that. It comes in a variety of sizes and will be clean and straight. You will often hear folks make the statement "O1 is a forgiving steel", but they never say what the heck that means. What it means is that with O1, if you botch the heat treat on the first go around, it is easier to recover and save the knife than with some other steels, and it can take a litle bit of overheating as long as you don't really burn it up. Same thing with 5160 and 1084. Contrast this with say, 52100. 52100 does not like being over heated one bit. But that's for another discussion.

For websites with good general articles and tips which include heat treating, you might try:

Don Fogg
KnifeArt.com

I have some fairly good information on my website as well, though I don't go into the specifics of heat treating such as temperatures and time. Mine is at: Terry Primos

We also have an excellent tutorial section at CKD. You can access it from here at the forums. Look at the top of the page. There are a series of links, one of which say's "Tutorials". There are some articles covering heat treating there. Oh heck, let me go ahead and put a link here too. It's: CKD Tutorials Section

For specific heat treating info you can also check out:
Crucible Heat Treat Information
Principal Metals Online (Look in the "Properties Data" section)
Cancom Master Index (Huge site. This is a link to the heat treating section)

You also can continue to ask questions here. Collectively, we have a lot of knowledge here at the forums.

Thank you very much for your input.

I'm a computer junky for a profession and I love it when I find a nice, kind, and informative forum.

I agree with everything Terry said in his post. I started out with the three step method. When I began to make my own blades the late Bob Engnath directed me to 5160 because of its cost and quality. It turned out to be a great steel to learn on and it was inexpensive. However, as Terry points out, it has a heavy mill scale and is often a far cry from flat. I was making full tang knives to start and I was very frustrated at first trying to get the steel flat enough to create a good quality knife. Even when I ground a beautiful blade, I would often waste hours trying to get a flat tang. O1 would have solved that. Yes, precision ground O1 is about two or three times the cost of 5160, depending upon vendor, quantity purchased, shipping, etc., but it is FLAT! Now, when a new maker asks me what to learn on I always try and guide them towards O1. To me, the extra cost is well worth the time savings and reduced level of frustration.

JohnM