Thread: How thin is too thin???

Also as you are heat treating, you will get scale and lose some surface carbon.
So even regardless of warpage, you still need to material to grind away in order to end up with good steel without scale pox.

I just love that term: Scale Pox

I'm sorry to be so late on this. I've been lost in the post-Ashokan Seminar rat race.

I grind the edges to 0.030" thick on my tool steel blades. I also leave about 0.015 extra on the bottom of the edge as well.

The extra thickness allows for more wiggle room, as Charlie said. The extra width helps allow for decarberization during heat treating, as mentioned by Bruno.

Wiggle room. I stop .040 to .050 (ish). The reason is because of the thin cross section. With other types of tools having thicker cross sections you can significantly decrease the grind allowance.

Anyone remember how thick the decarb layer is when treated in a salt bath or electric furnace?

Jeff