Thread: Would this work for steel?

Randy's point is well taken. Steel without heat treatment can have anything happen to it and you won't care as much. But after heat treatment, you're working on an object that is close to finished. Starting over on a very thin edge leaves even less room for correction, IF it survives the next cycle through the hot zone. Most will potato chip and become two sizes smaller (8/8 is now 6/8). Or if your tools mean using fire to heat treat, there will be a lot of scale to remove as well. Cleaning all that up, may leave you with no option but to make a frameback out of what's left.

If you're not doing your own heat treatment, you just cost yourself some money in time/postage and another cycle in the furnace.

Originally Posted by paco664

...its not necessarily when you feel heat that you cool it....... its when it feels like its fixing to burn you......

Then get used to being an example. When the steel is hot enough to feel like it's burning your fingers...it's already too late. The heat can still be rising in the material, and fast enough that you can't reach the slack tub where the cooler water is in time to stop the damage to the heat treatment. You may be working the spine, "I was no where near the edge..", and that heat can sweep into the thin sections and you'll know the heartbreak. Especially if you can't do your own heat treatment, 'cause that blade is toast and all your work starts again.

For beginners, I'd recommend and repeat, just feeling warm is when to start moving to the water. Don't get me wrong. I admire daring and heavy calloused fingers. But you will get tired of heartbreak fairly quickly, especially when a customer is waiting on a blade to get done and you're on the clock.

Being successful on a grinder means anticipating mistakes before they happen and then not making them. Fixing things after a mistake is a miserable existence.

Originally Posted by paco664

WOW!!! i was used for a example!!!!

actual shaping time for mine were in the 1-1 1/2 hour range...... you need a better grinder,......

its not necessarily when you feel heat that you cool it....... its when it feels like its fixing to burn you......

i used a normal bench grinder and a belt sander to shape the 2 examples you saw.......... i hope your attempt makes you as happy as mine have made me......

be careful... wear eye protection.... go to harbor freight and get you that bench grinder...

A beginner may not realise that the time to be very careful indeed about heating through grinding, is when the blade is being ground after heat treatment. In grinding a piece of annealed steel which will be hardened afterwards, discoloration is acceptable. As to whether you can do all the required grinding before heat treatment, the answer is a maybe, but it is more likely with a flat or nearly flat ground wedge razor than with hollow ground, and plenty of extra steel should be left on the latter. It is inadvisable to try to harden a thin section, and further grinding will very likely be needed to regularise a slightly distorted blade.

If I had to attempt a full or extra hollow ground blade, my first thought would be to say "What kind of fool was I to tell people I could do this?" and my second would be "Would air-hardening steel, like A-2, reduce the chances of disaster?" Good file steel is every bit as good as some of the best razors have been made of - and my only proviso there is that you should grind well below the level of the file teeth, especially near the edge. Sometimes the teeth are cut by a process that can make the beginnings of a crack.

The only factor which might make it a good idea for the amateur experimenter to buy steel, is the reduction of distortion in heat treatment. O1 (or O-1) tool steel is readily available and inexpensive, and hardens under the gentler cooling effect of quenching in oil.

If you are aiming for flat surfaces, you would find your job much easier with one or two grades of diamond hone, or with successive grades of aluminium oxide or silicon carbide paper, starting with the coarsest, glued to a flat piece of wood.

point well taken........ i have made knives out of files since the age of 12 when i would make them in the back of my fathers welding/machine shop ... where i also learned how to retemper when i made a booboo..... with the years i learned how not to overheat *(altho on the "2nd effort" i did overheat the spike which is why it disappeared between photos)......

using the stock removal method to shape a blade *(beit razor or knife) the more stock you remove the more careful you must be not to overheat....

get a container of some bowl shape... *(i use a 1/2 a milk jug) and fill it with water.... douse the blade when you feel heat... as you get closer to your shape objective remember there is less steel to heat therefore it will heat much much faster.... its not a race to the finish.......

i hope your attempt works for you as well as mine have worked for me.... *(i also have screwed up HUNDREDS more files than you have over the years....lol...)

i can still hear my 6'7" 320pound father in the back of the shop when he would catch me building a knife

WHERE DID YOU GET THAT DAMN FILE?

ummm.... elliots hardware *(weak smile)....

BOY!! I AM GONNA *(insert threat of painful death here) IF YOU DON'T STOP BLANKING UP ALL MY FILES....

sorry dad.... *(not really)

Fortunately files blunten in use, and eventually become useless. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Originally Posted by Caledonian

Fortunately files blunten in use, and eventually become useless. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

yeah... i tried that excuse....... 30 years later i think i still may have the belt marks on mah buttocks..... lol...

I baught the 2 files I am using from a wood shop for $2.00 each. They were too dull to be any use to the guy so he was glad for the $4.00 and I got 2 Chicago steel files!

HTPD is serious indeed Mike!

good luck on the projects Shake

Thank you, I just got some more sanding disks so it's back to work.

Originally Posted by Mastershake

Thank you, I just got some more sanding disks so it's back to work.

photos of progress??

Nothing worth photoing yet......looks like a shiny file now. lol