I want to learn how to make knifes.

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

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

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

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