Help - Thin steel stock for knife making

[Matthew N. Masail]

I recently started a Marquetry class, really fun! the Xacto knives given to us are anything but ideal, the teacher himself uses a shop made knife. so I searched my home but the only steel I could find to make one was a stainless steel steak knife.... so I made 3 knives (for my boss and his partner also taking the class) and they feel great, cut great, even the teacher really liked them. however the steel isn't good enough and the very tip of the knife, the only part doing 95% of the cutting, folds over into a hook..

Long story short I need and want to make few sets of knives, but can't seem to find suitable steel that doesn't need heat treatment. I was thinking maybe HSS ? I am looking for steel that is flat and around 0.6-0.8mm thick. any help or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

[ian maybury]

Others will no doubt come in Matthew, but the bottom line is that you're unlikely to get a steel to work that doesn't have a decent amount of carbon in it (a plain but fairly high carbon steel), or probably less ideally carbon equivalent by way of carbon plus alloying elements (e.g. a ferritic/hardenable stainless steel) - and hardened and tempered appropriately.

One isssue even if you get something suitable by way of steel stock is that you would then have to cut and form/grind it without disturbing the temper - unless you decide to go the whole hog and get into heat treatment. There's quite a bit here via Google just now on knife making steels: http://www2.knifecenter.com/info/knife-blade-materials

Don't know what people use for marquetry - every sort of knife comes up on Google - but might it be worth thinking of finding something like a good quality and close to shape carving knife, and then rework it to suit?

These are pretty hard e.g. http://www.leevalley.com/en/Wood/pag...332,43339&ap=1 There are other much cheaper carving knives about like Kirschen, Flexcut etc. Quite a few either don't quote a hardness number, or are significantly softer.

I'd avoid an unspecified one, but against that don't have enough experience of the performance and behaviour of differing hardness steels in knives to advise what hardness might suit best for your sort of work. If you need to cut down with force a very hard steel can snap if it is thin enough to get bent sideways a bit, but against that a softer one may sacrifice some edge holding ability. Maybe somebody can advise a practicably workable hardness level to shoot for in a knife?

It can be very useful in fine work to have the right shape of knife with a replaceable blade as on an Xacto or a professional tool like a scalpel. (stuff sold to retail/non expert markets may anyway avoid high levels of hardness due to the risk of blades snapping and leading to claims) One to be aware of is that there's quite a lot of cheap knock off/commodity modelling knife blades about which anyway probably don't the have good quality steel in them. There are however scalpels and the like which do, maybe some good quality modelling/craft knives too.

One issue i found when i did a lot of modelling was that the sharpening bevel on these knives is typically a bit blunt/wide angled. I gravitated to buying a specific brand of knife and blade with good steel (actually Xacto - but it's years ago and i don't know what the quality is now), and then reworking and re-sharpening it. Waterstones as i'm sure you know would do a fabulous job on them...

[Nick Olimpi]

You are more than likely going to have to heat treat any steel you are working with even if it was already hardend if you Can do this yourself or no someone with a forge 1095 or o1 tool steel can easily be hardened then tempered in your oven at 325-400 for about an hour or find a local blacksmith they would be able to help they are all over. Depending where you are I may be able to find someone in your area with a forge that could treat the blade once it is shaped

[Nick Olimpi]

For a thin Ian in my experience your not going to want it to hard because as you said it can snap under pressure but not hold and edge as well but doesn't mean you will have to sharpen every 5 mins just more often. I don't know about specifics of hardiness but probably around 45 to 50 on the Rockwell scale would be a good balance for a thin knife but unless your having it treated no way of telling, but that's where your heat on the temper comes into play. Higher tempering heat will give you more flexible blade maybe in the 400f range would be what I would temper at.

[Pat Barry]

How wide and thick do you want the knife blade to be? If it is not too big you could try using a hacksaw blade

[Doug Trembath]

Call me crazy, but power hacksaw blades work great for larger marking knives, and jigsaw blades work wonderfully for smaller ones. Just use care not to turn them blue as you grind and sharpen. They are hard, edges last a LONG time, and they are easily found, worked, polished, and definitely appreciated!

YMMV, of course. Check Derek's site for more. He presents it better than I, but I was using this stuff many years ago for carving knives, etc. Cheap and effective.

Doug Trembath

[Jamie Buxton]

Many planers have throw away knives. When they get dull, you just replace them. The dulled knives might be what you're looking for.

[mark weathersbee]

Old hand files, old circular saw blades no carbide, railroad spikes, bandsaw blades, all make excellent starter knives. To make a knife from steel that is already hardened you first need to soften it or anneal it. Basically you need to get it to red hot and let it slowly cool down.

For steels I'd recommend 107x, 108x, 5160, or the w1/w2 steels. Those you can get red hot dunk in a bucket of oil or water and they'll harden. Many other steels require more precise temp control.

I'm a hobby bladesmith and do some nice work but there are some amazing makers out there. Hope this helps. I'll type more later.

[Lonnie Gallaher]

CS makes marking knives out of spade bits. I don't know what the steel type is, but it would be worth a try. Most of the work is already done.

[Brian Thornock]

I like to get jigsaw blades, grind off the teeth (without wrecking the temper), and turn it into knives. My #1 marking knife is made from this. Takes a beautiful edge and lasts a really long time.

[Dan Hulbert]

I've made some marking knives using strips cut from a broken saw plate,

[Matthew N. Masail]

Thanks, a lot of good advice here. the main Issue here is the thickness of the blade as I mentioned in my first post 0.6-0.8mm thick or 0.025"-0.030". hacksaw blades are too flexible.

I was able to see online that jigsaw blades might be available at 0.030" thick so I will try to find something locally, I hope I do. but if not this might just be my entry gate to hardening and tempering.

ready made knives are not an option, at minimum I need to make 15 knives... I planned to post a pic here, but life happened and I just don't have the time.

Thanks again to everyone, hopefully I will post results soon, I have a few tool projects to finish that I would like to share.

[ian maybury]

It might be worth having a sniff around to see what some of the knife making people have to say regarding the choice of steel, and what's involved in hardening and tempering Matthew. Most jigsaw and hacksaw blades will have quite a lot by way of chrome, molybdenum etc in them for toughness and abrasion resistance, but will sacrifice some hardness to achieve this. They definitely make a reasonable knife blade, but it could be that something more like a suitable mostly carbon steel will take a slightly better edge.

Since you're going to be doing quite a lot of shaping it might be as well to to bite the bullet and commit to going the hardening and tempering route. That way you can grind away to your heart's content for the rough shaping without worrying about doing harm. Since it'll be pretty lightweight it probably won't be too hard to set up to this anyway...

[Matthew N. Masail]

Good point Ian about the shaping. although it is quite easy with such thin stock. it's also super easy to burn the edge when grinding the bevel, I think I need to make a jig for the belt sander.

The edge doesn't need to be super razor sharp, but it needs to hold a reasonably sharp point at the very tip. I hope to post a picture tomorrow.

[ian maybury]

It'd make it all a lot safer for the steel if you could drop the speed of the belt sander from that of the typical woodworking type. It'd give decent control too. Something around 800ft/min as on a WorkSharp seems about right. The 6 x 1/2in diamond lapidary discs we've talked about putting on a WS before run significantly cooler than does aluminium oxide paper, and as you know are pretty cheap off the web. There's a guy in Hong Kong that does them mail order...