/diy/ - Do It Yourself

Made a lot of kitchen knives
I really won't miss 2020 though

>>2006669
I work out of my garage as well, these little buggers are 65HRC, very high purity carbon steel and you're only looking at a 10min soak at 810C
Majority of my stuff is stainless though which usually in the 58-59HRC, semi-stainless is in the 61-62HRC. That does require a kiln + thermocouple though which isn't always available but there's also nothing to stop you shipping them off to a heat treat place or someone else who does have a kiln or if you're feeling adventurous you can do it in a blocked off forge and carefully maintaining your temps manually. You can get a K or N-type thermocouple and reader for about $50-100 with a bit of shopping around and I recommend most people do that instead if staring into a pit of infrared radiation and 'guessing' how hot something is.

Peak hardness isn't everything through unless its suitable for the knife and given a lot of people are clowns with knives so its often better to trade off some of that for a bit of toughness in case it ever gets used as a pry bar, popping the lids off paint cans, thrown at a walls, dropped on the floor, being whacked on the spine and other chimp levels of abuse.
Its why a lot of outdoor knives end up in the 55-58HRC bracket because people try to cut down trees with them

>>1972642
Yep, it was originally created as a razor and scalpel steel so it has extremely minimal amounts of phosphorus and sulphur, the rest is just 1.2% carbon, a bit of chromium, silicon and manganese. I really like the Hitachi steels but the Japs are so autistic about letting it out of the country and really don't like selling it to humble home beaters unless you're buying it by the tonne. So for a non-powder, low-no impurity carbon steel the Voestalpine products are much easier to find in large plates at what I consider a reasonable price.
Its not 1095 or W2 cheap and its hard to get outside of 3mm strip form though. You could probably sandwich it between some 420SS, nickel and make a decent san-mai out of it though

I do like a seax, its on my list of things to make one day when I get a chance

Been making some cooks knives out of 26C3 and getting used to the steel, kind of like W2 or 1095 on steroids and it takes a super fine, extremely hard edge. Differentially treated the spine for the purdy line and the edge is running about 64-65HRC as best I can tell. Made a small cleaver type for the kitchen as a test piece and been whacking the fuck out of it for the last month or so and while there's literally no stain resistance it takes a pretty blue-grey patina as well as holding that scalpel edge.
>Swedes
>Kind of a bunch of weirdos, but they make a great steel

Tomorrow on my non-stainless knife making holiday, heat treating some 8" chinese cleavers out of O1 which I've been putting off doing for some time, but got some fresh oil in and no excuses not to get them done.