Hey im not a knife maker by any means but i enjoy messing around with sharpening and i love knives. I recently took one of my old skate blades and put an edge on it and it is surprisingly razor sharp, basically my question is how do i harden it? Is the blade already hardened? Any info would be great, thanks.
Wow that's as Canadian as it gets. Toss a reindeer antler handle and a beaver skin sheath and you'll be set. No idea what a skate is made of but I would assume it's a hardened stainless steel. If it wasn't hardened it would stay sharp for long. You can try hitting it with a file to see if it's hard. Below is a link showing how to spark test steel. No doubt you could make a knife from it. How good it will be will be the question.
It reminds me of the movie Castaway. When Tom Hanks found the skate in the FedEx package he could've made a real sweet knife out of it. The beaver skin sheath is a good idea but what about using the leather parts of the rest of the skate. (I guess skates aren't made from leather anymore are they) I know it's never a good idea to use mystery steel but I still love the idea of upcycling "junk" metal. Making something beautiful and useful from something you would've thrown away otherwise... very cool.
