I had some free time tonight and decided to do some testing on a blade i got back from a demo. I was particularly concerned with this blade, as it seemed fine during my testing that was done before giving it out for the demo. I lent it to several hunters in the fall, and it cleaned multiple animals, including two moose. Guy A skinned his whitetail and a bull moose, and said all went well, design was good, scary sharp etc. Now what concerned me was that guy B, who also did a moose said that the knife would not hold an edge very well for him He stated that he had to sharpen it by hand several times on one moose. As you can imagine this worried me a lot. I recently got the knife back and noticed it had a terrible wire edge on it and the edge bevel was not centered anymore. After some digging i think this was his issue, as he said he sharpened it when he got it from guy A, and used one of those horrible "sharpeners" with the carbide V that just shaves the edge to a somewhat usable profile I assumed that what was happening was that he was losing just that burr each time and that the knife felt sharp but actually was not. Now that i have it back, i did quite a few tests and cant seem to find any issues. I sharpened it back to a shaving edge, and chopped through a 1x2 piece of walnut, still shaved. Chopped it again, and still shaved, although the hair didn't fly off quite as cleanly as before, but still pretty effortless. I sliced up some old carpet, and after that it didn't want to shave much but would still slice paper quite well, and sliced paper cleanly after a stropping. Then i decided to get tougher, so i used a hammer on the spine to chop through some 14-2 solid copper house wire, jacket and all about 15 times. There was no edge rolling and no chips or deformation. I then chopped a few chunks off some 1/8 copper pinstock i had, and edge was not affected. Chopped up a soup can without issues, and finally hammered the knife through a penny. The only test that really even made a noticeable difference to the edge was the penny, and even with that the edge was not visibly deformed but was just noticeable when i would run my finger nail across it. These were likely pretty extreme considering the blade is 1084, 1/8 thick by 2 high and has a full flat grind. My question is, what type of testing do you guys do on your blades? I know some of the more experienced guys have done enough HT that they know that it will work and may not need to test each blade, but what kinds of things do you do to test new steels or new HT methods? Secondly, after knowing his sharpening method, combined with the testing i did, do you think this blade is fine? Personally i am pretty sure it was the sharpener that caused the problem, but wanted to get other opinions on it as well.
Ohhhh man those sharpeners should allll be smashed! My mom has one and I keep telling her to toss it! I sharpened her knives and in no time they were all messed up because of that thing. I would chop it through some mild steel wire a few times to see what happens to the edge. From your test results I would think that it's performing like 1084 should. What was your tempering temperature?
Tempering temp was 400 for two one hour cycles, water quenched from the tempering oven after each cycle.I have heard from several reputable makers that rapid cooling after the temper cycle can have a very slight effect on grain refinement and edge holding. This was discussed on another site i frequent and i decided that even if it made no noticeable difference there was no harm in doing it that way, and i have been having good results. I also put a hockey puck in a vice and sliced a pile of sliced off of it. Pucks are vulcanized rubber and very gritty and abrasive. This was the last test and where the blade finally got to the point where it doesnt do that well slicing paper now.
Your good to go man. I didn't know that about the water quench. Maybe I will give it a go next time I heat treat
Like i said, when the topic was discussed about the temper quench it was stated that the benefits were minor to almost not noticable to most users, but were still there. Considering it really takes no time at all, i figured that it was worth it even if the benefit was extremely small.
