Month: February 2020

Forging, Toughness

Ranking Toughness of Forging Knife Steels

Larrin

Thanks to Dinkma, Gavel John, and Roger Rozenberg for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters!

Low-Alloy Steel Testing

Over the past two years or so we have tested the toughness of many knife steels using a simple charpy impact test. You can read about the specifications of the test on this page. With the samples tested in this article I got a lot of help from Warren Krywko and Devin Thomas as well as donated steel from Alpha Knife Supply, Barmond Special Steels, and Achim Wirtz. This article focuses on the toughness testing performed on “low alloy” and carbon steels that are often used by forging bladesmiths. It is possible to forge high alloy steels, of course, though it does not appear to be very common even today. read more

Heat Treating and Processing, Steel and Knife Properties, Super Steels

Friction Forged Knives – Diamondblade Friction Stir Processing

Larrin

Thanks to Keith Coleman, Paul Bruno, Lotiel Vardamir, and Lennart Palkovits for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters!

Friction Forged Knives

The company DiamondBlade Knives produces knives with friction stir processed (FSP) edges [1]. Diamondblade Knives is a sub-company of Knives of Alaska. They use conventional D2 tool steel and process the edge so that it has hardness of around 65-69 Rc and a spine at 38-42 Rc. The knives are advertised as having a finer grain structure than powder metallurgy stainless steel and superior edge retention, toughness, and sharpness than knives tested in 12 other blade steels including S90V. And that the friction forged edge is stainless unlike conventionally processed D2. So I am going to detail the process used to produce the knives and what the properties of the steel likely are. read more