Sure enough. :) Good job! :)
It reminds me of an Uncle Henry "sharp finger". :)
The best part for me tho, is knowing it's 63hrc A2,
I'm weird that way. :/
Alvin in AZ
On Wed, 22 Sep 2004 05:28:33 +0000 (UTC), snipped-for-privacy@XX.com wrote:
I made a hunting knife of a slightly different blade design from the
same material, for my brother at the same time, (when one started
getting too warm to handle I switched to the other, by the time that
one was getting warm the first one was cool), they both went through
controlled atmosphere heat treat together both at 63hrc. His field
dressed and skun out 3 whitetail deer, 2 black bears and a fairly
large bull moose without sharpening after I gave it to him, and after
all that it could still shave the hair off my forearm.
Bear
Cool. :)
Switching from one to another is how I've been finishing up HSS
blades lately. Dipping them in water in the past has cracked a few
of them... quit dipping -any- thin HSS with hot spots, in water in
the early 90's, finally learned my lesson. ;)
Try not to let him blow so much smoke up your butt ok? ;)
I don't doubt for a minute that his A2 knife holds an edge better
than any ten thousand knives out there tho! That's easy to do with
A2 at 63 hrc. :)
I've never actually used an A2 knife but would like to make one
someday... heat treating and cold treating requirements that I've
layed down for myself for A2 is holding me back for now.
Bob Loveless ("the" ATS-34 guy) claimed that he only made knives
from stainless steel because his customers demanded it. For his own
personal knives and those of friend's and relatives and certain
customers he could talk into it... A2 was his favorite. Read that
in "blade" magazine once... could hardly believe they printed that! :)
The dangged knife magazines were geared to worship stainless steel. :(
A2 is a stronger steel than O1 and A2 can be heat treated to be
harder than O1.
A2 is stronger than all the Mn based A# steels also.
O1 and all the other O# steels are based on cheap ol' Mn except for
one... O7 is like A2, instead they are based on Cr.
Don't know, but I'll bet A2 ain't stronger than O7. ;) Never seen
O7 for sale anywhere, ever, tho. :/
That doggone Cr is good stuff if not concentrated more than 5%.
Stainless steel at more than 10%Cr is a mess. :)
Alvin in AZ
On Wed, 22 Sep 2004 18:30:59 +0000 (UTC), snipped-for-privacy@XX.com wrote:
The hairs were shaved off the back of my arm, if Dan tried sharpening
any knife it would be in worse shape than before he started, same
holds for the rest of my family, I take care of that for all of us, he
can build danm near any kind of building, but when it comes to
sharpening he's hopeless, after each of his hunting trips I checked
the knife out and since it was still plenty sharp I didn't bother with
it, the moose was the first trip after that it made me curious because
I saw how dull Dad's knife was after his moose hunting trip., so I
just checked it after each trip. some time after the ones listed above
Dan was showing it to one of his friends , his friend dropped it in
the driveway and that put a few small bright spots on the edge so I
retouched the edge at that time, since then it's just done 2 deer.
A2 also just feels nice when you are grinding it for some reason, I
have no idea why,, but it does kind of ring like a bell when it's
against the belt even in the annealed state.
Bear
If we can change that to "scraped off" I'll go along with it right
now. ;)
There's "scraped off" and there's "shaved off" and then there's "cut
off in mid-hair". ;)
I was thinking more like cut off in mid-hair then had to back pedal
to shaved then realized "yeah that's posible if we're talking about
scraped off :)".
A cowboy was the first to show me that the blade is truely sharp
enough to begin skinning a coyote when it'll catch the hair in mid
hair and leave some laying on the blade even. Cut the hair off the
back of your thumb a good 1/16" above the skin.
Take a throw away razor apart and try it with one of those blades...
you'll know what to shoot for in sharpness from then on. ;)
The main thing I tell a receiver of one of my knives is to tell me
the "bitter truth not sweet lies" (shouldn't that be the other way
around danggit!?) because I was using them as feed-back on where to
go next and if they were "nice instead of truthful" to me they could
send me off in the wrong direction and truely hurt me in the long
run.
I feel as tho I have a pretty good feel for how much edge holding
there is in an extra-hard steel blade. We skin, quarter, hang over
night and butcher Cows for food for several ranches using my HSS
and extra hard 1095, O1, reheat treated 1095 and 50100-B knives let
alone all the factory knive like one ranch came with a whole shit
pot full of I.Wilson's that look like new and they are ~1.2% carbon
steel.
Pretty soon 8670-modified (like L6) blades, as hard as I can get
them, will be added to the mix for testing. :)
I have a couple of large slabs of VascoWear (tool steel type 421, A2
is type 420, VascoWear has no AISI/SAE "A#" designation) is cool
sounding stuff too! :) VascoWear is like a cross between A2 and A7.
The Vasco Wear was given to me by a long lost r.k'er.
My HSS knives ring when a thumb is run side ways over the edge, it's
very distinctive, I think I know what you mean there too. ;) I like
to hollow grind the HSS to under .015" farther than a 1/4" back.
Someday when I make or have access to a controlled temperature oven
I'll heat and cold treat (at least -120F) some A2 and the VascoWear.
Anyway the shade's moved over my grinder so I'm outta here. ;)
Alvin in AZ
On Fri, 24 Sep 2004 21:25:53 +0000 (UTC), snipped-for-privacy@XX.com wrote:
That's more or less what I do as well, it's nice to be able to make a
hand-made gift for someone special in your life and do what industry
calls "Product evaluation" at the same time. I've always wanted to
start a business making custom knives so I've been doing a lot of
learning for a lot of years I know already what would be my biggest
hurdle,, I can do good work with my hands, but I know nothing at all
about the paperwork end or the sales end of running a business. But
since most of the knives I've made have gone to family members and
close friends I have more of a chance to keep an eye on how they stand
up, those I gave my family members are only sharpened or retouched by
me. Those I've given to my friends I'm not so sure of, they would be
more likely to tell sweet lies than my family. My family can be almost
brutally honest with each other without worrying about hurting each
other's feelings. My friends worry about that sort of thing far more
than needed, and all but one can sharpen their own knives with at
least fair expertise. Most of my friends either are or were machinists
and I think machnists by and large have a better grasp on how to
maintain cutting edges than the general public because they work with
the results of it every day. I may be biased in that because I was a
machinist myself for half of my 48 years here on Earth.
Sorry for rambling, I've a killer migraine right now and it's hard to
think straight with one of those.
Bear
You must be a Large Lad. I made a 'two-handed' dagger for another Large
Lad, six and a half inches in the grip, fifteen inches in the blade. He
loved it, said it just fit his hand. For the mushrooms, try strobe
lights at variable intensity mounted directly overhead in a grid, then
drive it from a MIDI interface and use a Casio electronic piano for
input. Not quite the Mouse Organ, but close.
Charly
On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 23:15:05 GMT, Charly the Bastard
I'm not all that tall, at least compared to my younger brother or
either of my grandfathers, but I do have very broad shoulders and the
first thing Dad ever heard about me after "It'l a boy" was "My God
look and the big hands and feet on that kid!". The grip on a WWII
Marine Corp combat knife is small to the point of feeling cramped, to
fit my hand right I need at least a 5 1/2 inch grip on a chopping or
slicing kitchen knife. That dagger you made would have felt wonderful
to me.
I'll have to give the strobes and MIDI set-up at try,, trouble is no
one can hear them but me,,,,,
Bear
Could be, but don't think so yet. :)
"knifes" might be a clue tho huh? ;)
Cool thanks. :) Good guess on the hardness, 99% of the time you'd
be spot-on. But this one's not all that hard, not the right kind of
steel for that... or I just don't know how to heat treat the dangged
stuff... Usually boron steel has carbon in it too, the boron
"enhances" carbon's work... this is weird stuff and I just don't
know nuthin about it. :( Made it as hard as I could tho! :)
It started out butt-ugly. No sweat it's just a test knife for the
boron bandsaw steel... later after a little use I took the dremel
to it and whacked off a bunch of the blade and re-shaped what was
left... and I liked the new shape about as much as any I've ever
made. :)
Just never know. :)
Alvin in AZ
On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 00:15:46 -0300, "Charles Bronson"
I did that very same thing one a knife I made for my little sister,
that was after I made the mistake of epoxying the grips on before
finishing wth front edge of the slabs on the knife I made for my other
sister, I don't recommend finishing the front of the grips after
mounting them,, it took a very long time ;o)
I got it all right by the time I made Mom's hunting knife. When they
get back from vacation I'll have her get out her digital camera and
take a couple of pictures of that one and the one I made Dad.
yea well, I guess it's all part of the learning curve, good judgement
comes from experience,, most of that comes from bad judgement.
Bear
A gal ended up with my first knife. It has a cool handle (to me)
but the blade is butt-ugly (didn't have a blade shape I liked in my
head when I made it, just the handle shape) First time it was used
was the day after I gave it away, me and her husband skinned a 650
lb hog with it. (a red one and minus his nuts for about 4 months;)
I've been wanting to borrow it so I can scan the ugly old thing. :)
On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 18:45:22 +0000 (UTC), snipped-for-privacy@XX.com wrote:
If it was a red one it was a Duroc, Dad bought 3 Duroc boars back when
he was still raising hogs, all 3 were worthless, one just wanted to
fight the sows, the other 2 were gay, spent all their time riding each
other and had no intrest in the sows at all. Dad ended up sending all
3 to Hormel for Spam at a loss. Purebred breeding stock is way more
expensive than market hogs.
Duroc huh? ...didn't know that. :)
Sounds familiar tho like I was told that before, several times. :/
(I'm just a dumb railroader, what'd ya expect?)
He was one of the hogs that got "let loose" after the gov't shut
down the new pig farm in the San Simon Valley. Something about
in-humane treatment or something silly like that. They were doing
fine until the gov't owned them, then they died and rotted on the
spot! Some were let loose just before death by some locals and so
we ended up with wild "spanish pigs" in the mountains around there
for about 15 years.
We made whole-hog sausage out of him. :)
Alvin in AZ
On Tue, 14 Sep 2004 02:29:05 +0000 (UTC), snipped-for-privacy@XX.com wrote:
I went to tech school in a small railroad town and got to know a lot
of railroaders during the 3 years I went to school there, for some
reason the words dumb and railroader never seemed like they should be
in the same sentence.
When I was in high school my parents bought a farm building site, and
being as they had 2 strong teenage boys Dad decided to start a fairly
small but extremely labor intensive hog farrowing opperation as a
sideline,, Dan and I knew full well he only did it to keep us from
running all over hell and gone with our stoner friends but Dad claimed
otherwise,, funny thing that right after Dan and I were grown and gone
he sold out of the hogs.
Bear
The first rays of dawn make the mushrooms scream.
I think with careful cultivation I can make them do "Ode to Joy".
Grab a piece of hardenable steel, heat to yellow and pound the hell out of
it repeatedly for a forged blade or just get right to the belt sander and
grindstone if you want to simply hog it out. Nothing hard about it as you
can adjust for your mistakes as you go. If you're setting out to make
swords and ending up with paring knives, well, you need a bit more practice
yet. ;)
Tim
--
"I've got more trophies than Wayne Gretsky and the Pope combined!"
- Homer Simpson
Website @ http://webpages.charter.net/dawill/tmoranwms
On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 02:51:50 -0500, "Tim Williams"
I like that line, mind if I use it from time to time?
Bear
The first rays of dawn make the mushrooms scream.
I think with careful cultivation I can make them do "Ode to Joy".
www.knifenetwork.com
www.warnerknives.com
www.primosknives.com
http://www.knives.com/engnath.html
www.bladeforums.com
these are only a few...people on the forums can help immensley
Byron Witty
Metroplex Wood Care
Quality Fence Sealing & Restoration
(469)438-3076
snipped-for-privacy@metroplexwoodcare.com
On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 22:14:37 -0300, "Charles Bronson"
You might want to get Wayne Goddard's $50 knife shop book. It shows you how
to start making knives for little of nothing. Shows you how to harden,
temper them as well. I found mine through Amazon from a sub dealer for $7
plus shipping brand new.
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