Bent knife tip help

[salad]

Hi

I am looking for a bit of advice and help
I have bent the the to 2mm tip of my bushcraft knife. Is there any thing I can do to restore this

 

[Longstrider]

Ouch ! That's dodgy territory

There are a number of things that can be said and done here. The first is that you can simply try tapping it straight again with a hammer on an anvil or similar flat surface. this will result in one of two things happeng.. you will either get a starightened knife tip, OR it will snap clean off.
If it were mine and it straightened out I would want to know how well heat treated the blade was to start with. I'd want to test it with my hardness testing files at least to make sure it wasn't a bit too soft to take and hold a good edge if it was malleable anough to withstand being bent and straightened that way.
If the tip snaps off it can always be re-ground so that you'd hardly ever know it happened. It needs doing with care, but it can be done.

Heating the tip to make it workable in order to prevent snapping is NOT an option unless you plan on stripping the handle off and re-heat treating the whole blade again afterwards. This can be done, but is far more hassle than a re-grind and re-shape should it snap off trying to straighten it cold.

 

[marcusleftthesite]

Might be best to just reprofile it.Grind and dip frequently to keep it cool so as to not bugger up the heat treat.If it's only 2mm it should'nt alter the knife very much at all.

 

[marcusleftthesite]

Beaten to it by Longstrider,listen to him he knows his subject.

 

[JonathanD]

Out of curiosity, what knife was this?

 

[salad]

Ouch ! That's dodgy territory

There are a number of things that can be said and done here. The first is that you can simply try tapping it straight again with a hammer on an anvil or similar flat surface. this will result in one of two things happeng.. you will either get a starightened knife tip, OR it will snap clean off.
If it were mine and it straightened out I would want to know how well heat treated the blade was to start with. I'd want to test it with my hardness testing files at least to make sure it wasn't a bit too soft to take and hold a good edge if it was malleable anough to withstand being bent and straightened that way.
If the tip snaps off it can always be re-ground so that you'd hardly ever know it happened. It needs doing with care, but it can be done.

Heating the tip to make it workable in order to prevent snapping is NOT an option unless you plan on stripping the handle off and re-heat treating the whole blade again afterwards. This can be done, but is far more hassle than a re-grind and re-shape should it snap off trying to straighten it cold.

Thanks . I think I will look into maybe getting it re ground. I am well gutted

 

[salad]

Out of curiosity, what knife was this?

Woodlander in 3mm
It was my own stupid fault

 

[JonathanD]

Nightmare. easily sorted though and apart from being just a tad short, you probably won't be able to tell the difference after a while. Keep us informed though.

 

[Shinken]

If it taps back then i suspect it has been Heat treated properly but when giving it a finishing grind the tip got too hot (tip is very susceptible to this) If this is the case it should only be the end 1 or 2mm affected.

 

[salad]

Thanks all for yer advise.
I Tried tapping it back and got most of it straight however the very end tip did break off as some of you said it might. I then flatened the spine out on a 400 grit stone and began a very long sharpening process on a number of different grit stones.
I am happy with the final result it is not perfect but I now have a useable knife again. I am sure there are loads of people who could get it much better than me but I am plesed that I will be using this again and again.
The strange thing is I now like this knife even more than I did before.

Thanks

 

[Ph34r]

I think you did a good job of the repair, unfortunately because you told us in the first place, i know it was bent

 

[salad]

I think you did a good job of the repair, unfortunately because you told us in the first place, i know it was bent

Cheers .

 

[Robbi]

good job !

 

[Jus_like_that]

If it taps back then i suspect it has been Heat treated properly but when giving it a finishing grind the tip got too hot (tip is very susceptible to this) If this is the case it should only be the end 1 or 2mm affected.

I agree, as its quite a high grind on 3mm makes it even more susceptible to over heating. Done a nice job there though!

 

[Longstrider]

Nicely done that man It's always a case of of 'Will it ? Won't it ?' when you try straightening something like that. Looks like you got the measure of it nicely.

 

[dave53]

hi all i was given a chefs knife this week and asked if i could do something with it as the tip was chipped and the edge was full of dinks all along th edge so i flattened the whole edge to get rid of the damage then reground the whole edge i was lucky i managed to get it shaving sharp i hope he is pleased with it, he is one of our heroes in iraqu ,and will appreciate a good edge regards dave