The best steel for Knifemaking ?

[Roving Rich]

Can we please agree on this one gentlemen (and ladies to)
Hi Folks,
With too many knives on the market (or maybe not enough?) I can't decide which one to buy, or for that matter afford alot of them (yes they may well be worth it). Sound familiar ? Well I have a solution:
I want to make my own. This way I get exactly what I want and if I am not happy with it I can alter it or make another. Plus I just want to do it from some peculiar self sustainability/survival chip.
Now you all seem to know your knives.
So what is the best bit of steel to start with ?
The leads sofar: (or rather steels- dont get confused yet please :-D )
An Old File, High carbon steel and 012 tool steel.
I am not an engineer so I don't know where to get "propper" steel from.
I can't tell "high carbon" from me elbow and have no idea 012 means, but guess it makes good tools. I think I can locate an old file though...
The story sofar... (Skip this if you want)
I made (or rather remade) a knife this summer. My quest for old steel (besides buying a billhook i did'nt have the heart to destroy) took me to the "Tools for Self Reliance", the name seemed to fit with my philosophy, and a great source for old hand tools, (before they export them to Africa! :evil: ) they pointed me to the 50p box where i found a nice old knife stamped "Guillo".- 4inch blade rust, layers of paint loose bland wooden handle V blunt. A reshape, new antler handle (antler found in Scotland) brass finger guard (brass door plaque found in a piano?)then a grind on my freind loverly Tolmek grinder,- I want one! and I have my current knife. I borrowed a sheath off my "marine killing knife" (apparently) before making a taylored one on a primitive living skills course, complete with sparky thing holder sheath alongside (cant seem to darken it down with shoe polish though).
Phew wot n essay
Look forward to your advice (or was that arguments )
Rich

 

[ESpy]

There's an open-ended question and then some...

I'm presuming you want to start with stock removal - i.e. take a piece of steel, grind everything away that doesn't look like a knife.

For the old file, you can use a bench grinder - not ideal, but it works. Grind it holding the steel bare handed, and when it gets too hot to hold, dunk it in water to cool it. This will hopefully avoid destroying the temper on the steel - i.e. it stays hard. Files tend to be quite hard, so they are also fairly brittle. Newer files tend to be case hardened - they only have a high carbon content for in the outside skin...

O1 is a good steel to use, having about 1% carbon ("high"!) - bought in the annealed form from (e.g.) RS, Chronos, model engineering supplies places etc. etc. Frequently called gauge plate. Nice and easy to file, very forgiving in heat treat.

There are other suitable steels, but O1 is the most readily available in the UK.

Your best bet is probably to ask on - wait for it - British Blades, where you can watch us babble incoherently about knife making.

ATB

 

[Martyn]

I'd have to agrtee with Peter.

"Which is the best" will spark endless arguments about appllication, environment and use. But if you're making one from scratch, get some O1 tool steel (high carbon steel). It will go rsuty if you leave it out in the rain for a month, but it'll be fine if you look after it.

makes excellent knives, still a preferred steel my many of the top makers. Very forgiving, easy to work, readily available, easy to heat treat, holds a good edge, tough, easy to sharpen...

Many high carbon steels will do fine, but O1 is just about perfect.

(BTW it's O1, not zero 12)

If you want to source your steel from a scrapyard, old leaf springs are the choice of many. You'll nead to anneal the steel before use and then re-harden & temper after grinding, but it's good steel.

 

[Roving Rich]

britishblades never heard of um ?
(I thought you were all over here anyway)
Rich

 

[Martyn]

britishblades never heard of um ?
(I thought you were all over here anyway)
Rich

I think all of us are in both places..

Never heard of em...

phbt.

 

[ChrisKavanaugh]

www.knifeforums.com and www.bladeforums.com also have endless forums devoted to knifemaking.

 

[Martyn]

www.knifeforums.com and www.bladeforums.com also have endless forums devoted to knifemaking.

Which are American of course, but by far the best forum for knife makers, is the Custom Knife Directory. Which is totally devoted to the manufacture of knives by individual makers.

Though none of the above will help much in sourcing materials from the UK.

 

[sargey]

you could try http://www.buckhickman.co.uk/ they are suppliers of industrial equipment/supplies, you should be able to by steels from them in relatively small amounts.

go to the home page and click on distribution for your local branch, all sorts of grinders and equipment availble too.

cheers, and.

 

[C_Claycomb]

I have bought O-1 from both Tilgear (Cuffley, Herts) and from http://rswww.com/ which does mail order.

 

[Roving Rich]

Thanks C_Claycomb, for the RS link.
What do you wreckon "carbon case hardening" or "ground flat stock" which claims to have 0.85-1.00% carbon?
I have tried the the local model engineering shop who curses that he can't get metal in small quantities either. "not like when I started my apprenticeship back in 1935....." He was born in the early 20s so is Eighty something (Still working) and was just telling me of when he drove London to Mexico in 22 days, when me girlfriend dragged me out. I lookforward to meeting him again, when he sharpens my chainsaw for £3!
Cheers Rich

 

[MartiniDave]

Rich,

The ground flat stock is what you're after - A.K.A. gauge plate.

Dave

 

[Roving Rich]

Well the ground flat stock is on order,(ouch I don't like delivery charges)
Thanks everyone for your help,
Watch this space, i'll try and post a picture of the finished article.
Cheers Rich

 

[Keith_Beef]

At the risk of repeating what others have already mentioned, the answer to "what's the best steel" is, as almost always, "it depends"

You mention a thing called 012 (zero twelve)... Never heard of it. I think you mean O1 (letter O, figure 1). The letter O means it's an oil hardening steel; i.e., you heat it to what's known as the 'critical temperature', then you quench it in oil.

Files used to be made from W1, the W being for, wait for it, wait for it... water; i.e., you heat it to what's known as the 'critical temperature', then you quench it in water.

Then there's silver steel, lovely stuff, that is very close in chemical cmposition (so I'm told) to W5. Quench it in water, or in glycerine (see a thread on rec.knives).

You can also use EN42 (old 1955 standard name for it), a.k.a. 070A72 or CS70, on account of it being around 0.7% carbon. This is sold as 'spring steel'

Buying the stuff, in the UK is easy. Try Cromwell Tools, Buck and Hickman, RS, Argent Steel, or use the Yellow Pages to find steel stockholders near you. O1 is sold under the denomination "gauge plate" or GFS (ground flat stock).

When you start getting into knives, you have to start thinking about steel. That means you start getting into metallurgy. And so on. Everything is connected.

In about six month's time, you'll be hankering after a piece of D2... then you'll really be hooked.


Keith.

 

[Bigboggerchoot]

The

At the risk of repeating what others have already mentioned, the answer to "what's the best steel" is, as almost always, "it depends"

You mention a thing called 012 (zero twelve)... Never heard of it. I think you mean O1 (letter O, figure 1). The letter O means it's an oil hardening steel; i.e., you heat it to what's known as the 'critical temperature', then you quench it in oil.

Files used to be made from W1, the W being for, wait for it, wait for it... water; i.e., you heat it to what's known as the 'critical temperature', then you quench it in water.

Then there's silver steel, lovely stuff, that is very close in chemical cmposition (so I'm told) to W5. Quench it in water, or in glycerine (see a thread on rec.knives).

You can also use EN42 (old 1955 standard name for it), a.k.a. 070A72 or CS70, on account of it being around 0.7% carbon. This is sold as 'spring steel'

Buying the stuff, in the UK is easy. Try Cromwell Tools, Buck and Hickman, RS, Argent Steel, or use the Yellow Pages to find steel stockholders near you. O1 is sold under the denomination "gauge plate" or GFS (ground flat stock).

When you start getting into knives, you have to start thinking about steel. That means you start getting into metallurgy. And so on. Everything is connected.

In about six month's time, you'll be hankering after a piece of D2... then you'll really be hooked.


Keith.

Hi is there a difference in name for the same steels over the world?

 

[Shinken]

I just replied suggesting an old file, i spent 20 mins going through the process only for my windows 8.1 to freakin crash.

 

[Quixoticgeek]

Hi is there a difference in name for the same steels over the world?

Oh yes. Largely it's a European / US split. The US has ANSI, and various ANSI spec steels are out there. Then in Europe we spec them as things like EN45 or EN24 etc...

There are tables floating about online so you can work out what's closest to what. Oh, and if you talk to the scandi's, then you get a whole different naming scheme too...

You can get entirely engrossed in all the different steels that are out there for you to play with, the way they interact, the way they behave at different temperatures, what's red hard, what isn't. Oil quenching, water quenching, air hardening. And then you decide you want to play with pattern welding and now you open up a whole new can of worms as to which steels go well together in terms of how you work them, and how they go when you've etched them to expose the pattern...

And before long you find yourself sitting there thinking about Martensite, Austenite and Cementite ...

Metallurgy is fun...

J