sourcing steel?

[novembeRain]

I've made my first knife, it's nothing special really but works well so I'm pretty happy with it. I had a slight problem in getting some steel for it though;

I asked a mate of mine for 3, 4 or at a push 5mm thick and roughly 40mm wide and 8" long, what did I get?

Stainless flat bar, 50mm wide, two lengths about 500mm long and 6mm thick

I had a go anyway and it seems a pretty good piece of kit but I'd like to do one pretty much the same but 3 or 4mm thick carbon steel. I spent half the day trawling various places for a reduced or secondhand hover-mower blade but with little luck and my mate can only get stainless or mild (stainless is a bit more difficult) is "bright steel" hard enough / temper - able?

Any suggestions as to where to find suitable steel?

 

[Forest fella]

I just brought some O1 Steel off ebay,search for Bushcraft knives and you should find the O1 steel.

 

[tom miller]

Cromwells or Phoenix Steels Both have good stocks. Cromwells you can order from the interwebs though.

 

[Bimble]

Top notch kinfe steel is old leaf spings from old cars. Dirt cheap good quality high carbon steel. A bit of charcoal,a hair drier, hammer and an anvil ( the other bits of the sping) and you have forged a top knife.

Failing that some of the sexiest knife steels, stabalised wood for handels and inlays can be got from the German company, Dick Tools. Their unfortunate name seems to get them excluded from search engines but their blade steel is second to none, with prices to boot.

This is the second time I've mentioned them tonight. I should start charging them for the advertising....,
http://www.dick.biz/dick/category/dickcatalog/Klingenstahl-19_304/detail.jsf

 

[Matt.S]

"Bright steel" only means that it's cold-rolled as opposed to hot-rolled. In the mill, the massive crucible of steel is cast into ingots. At a cooler temperature (below 1600 degrees C) it is plastic rather than liquid, and is passed through a series of rolling machines to gradually give it a certain size and profile. When steel is heated in the presence of oxygen (i.e. in air) a hard skin of black iron oxide is formed, otherwise known as scale. If one forges or rolls this, the scale falls off, as it doesn't stick well to the metal above about 900C. Cold-rolled steel is passed through another set of rollers after being hot-rolled to give a precise size and to remove the scale. In the UK we call hot-rolled sheet 'black steel' and cold-rolled steel 'bright steel'. If some steel is referred to as black or bright, it's usually mild steel.

Try visiting websites like British Blades and IForgeIron.com. They have good resources for beginners, on most topics of blades, and the latter on most forms of metalworking but mainly bladesmithing, general blacksmithing and welding.

Try searching for 'O1 steel' -- it's a low-alloy high-carbon steel which is widely available and makes a very good blade. EN8 and EN9 are plain medium-carbon steels that wil make god chopping blades. EN43 is a similar spring steel.

If you learn to forge blades, you can use a much wider variety of sources for steel -- scrap springs, pry bars and all sorts. A good one I intend to use are old hammer heads to make axes and adzes. Some steels are only available as rod rather than bar too. You don't need much money and is a very rewarding hobby!

 

[Diligence]

You can also find yourself an old file....and temper it to be the right hardness for your knife. These are often high carbon steels...but watch out for cheap versions which are only case hardened....go for your grandpa's old files.

D