chainsaw bars?

K

KeithH

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Mar 25, 2007
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Hi I'm new here ; pleased to meet you all

I'm not sure if this is the appropriate sub-forum to post this but here it goes-

Chainsaw bars: what kind of steel is it (and how it specifically tempers), are they made from solid steel and can i make knives from them?

Thank you!
 
I don't know what kind of steel these are made out of- I suspect it varies from brand to brand and with the age of the chainsaw. I've heard that they "used" to make good knives. If you have some, give it a try. The tutorials sticky has some possible steels tables for junkyard steel- check around there. I'm the type that would make a knife out of it anyway just cause I have it and it probably would in some way improve my skills, junk steel or not. If you don't want to bother making a knife out of a piece that may not harden, just cut off several small strips/pieces and notch one of them about half way down. Heat the notched one to non magnetic(reddish color- one man's cherry is another man's apple, or other red color), quench it, if a file skates off the steel instead of cutting it, then try to break the steel at the notch in a vice. if it breaks, the steel will harden. If the file cuts, reheat-try to hold the nonmagnetic heat a little longer the second time, quench and check witht the file. Heat and quench the other pieces (do the file trick), sand off the oxide with 120 to 220 grit paper and try different oven temps between 400-450 to temper each and see which one seems the best for a light to dark straw color on the steel.

I'd check the tutorials for the right way to do the steel test I described. I'm sure some others will chime in here, shortly. Check the last 2 weeks of posts here- there have been some great threads on the stuff you're going to want to know. The books $50 Knifeshop, Blade's Guide to Making knives and How to Make Knives are found in Booksamillion, Borders, Barnes&Noble in my area on the shelves- those are pretty good starting places, too.

Welcome to the forums, too!
 
I got a few chainsaw bars about a year ago. One wasn't solid, having three layers of thin unidentified metal that seems to be tack welded together, it hardened up alright when I separated the layers but I found the frequent weld spots throughout the stock to be somewhat of a limiting factor in blade size and shape. Another bar is a huge solid chunk probably about 1/2" thick of another unidentified metal. Yet another is about 1/4-3/8 thick and whatever it is made of, it's real tough. My high school used to allow people to make knives, and they mostly used old chainsaw bars. I guess it's probably like any other "found" steels, there is bound to be something usable out there, it's just a matter of finding it and figuring out what it is.
 
Thanks!

its in my locker at school and the metal work teacher was kind enough to let cut the blanks there (its too hard to work with hand tools) its a 3/16", 24", Oregon Chainsaw bar. I cut it out today although with a plasma cutter and looks like its solid. This will be the first time i have built a knife-exciting! I have brown micarta for the scales. Could i anneal the still hard blank at home?
 
Some of the bars were a .30 or so carbon. The older ones were pretty tough, at least on the chainsaws. A friend of mine just made a knife out of a bar. He torchcut it, then ground rough bevels on it and spent a lot of time on it by hand. He did not anneal it, but it probably got some just because it got pretty hot getting torchcut. All the burnt metal ended up getting ground away though, as the knife was worked on. I don't know anything about heat treat on them, or how viable it is on the lower carbon blade. The bars were said to make good knives though.
 
KeithH said:
Chainsaw bars: what kind of steel is it ?
Click to expand...

On this forum there have been some guys who know a lot about chainsaw bars and use that steel.

I myself have checked out the bars i see in the lumberyard and Im not sure about that steel at all.
It seems to me for a chainsaw bar you would want a steel that can take heat, but will never chip or snap.

However I dont know about hardness???
Im not sure you want such a bar to be made out of a steel that gets real hard?

Im thinking that before I would ever go to the trouble of turning such a bar into a knife that I would really nail down what type of steel it was made of.
I have a sneaky feeling that perhaps the chainsaw bars that some guy's use is from the old days...
 
Modern Sthil saw bars are made to a german alloy that translates as about 5220. or .20 carbon. I doubt they'll ever harden enough to be worth doing.
 
Kiwi303 said:
I doubt they'll ever harden enough to be worth doing.
Click to expand...

Good information there.
Im not sure, but I would think you would want a chainsaw bar to be made of a steel thats not going to ever fail. The bar better not snap on a guy because your face is right there within a few feet of the spinning chain.
 
Don't use the chainsaw as a prybar them :)

Seriously, the bar on a chainsaw doesn't take a lot of abuse when properly used. It is essentially a guide. The chain takes the brunt of the load. In my experience a bar will generally outlast four or five chains. Then the guides start wearing out, and it lets the chain get sloppy. When using a chainsaw, a bent bar is just as dangerous as a broken bar.

Ken
 
I have herd some say that the particular bars they made knives from worked a lot like 5160. I have some but haven't taken time to do much with them, or enough to reach a conclusion. Probably like someone else said, different steel from different companies who make the chainsaws. I have herd some say that they work a lot the same as the large comercial circular saw blades. Unless you have it tested for element content you could try a simple heat treat and move it up from there if needed as someone has already suggested. The test as was presented for the "hardness" and a "brake test" on a small piece only takes a few minutes but can tell you a lot.
 
Since this is my first knife, i dont really have a shop ( i do but not a flat grinder or a heat source) for working knives so Im gonna pretend that it is 5160 or 1095. My friend who owns the chainsaw place says the one he gave me had real good steel in it and that alot of knifemakers come in asking for them.


Thanks for all the advice!

...dang i want a grinder
 
6 or 7 years ago someone posted that the bars were made of 01...He said he had asked an oregon employee. I don't post much but I read everything...and remember some of it.
 
they can wear out in 3 months in a proffesional gang.
a chain every fornight is not unusual.

if it's a household use bar tho, figure 5 to 10 years, sometimes more.
 
I'm still not sure whether i should stop working on it when the blank and wait till im better at making knives or just go for it, my first intentions were to use a file on the edge since i dont have a grinder. This thing is hard though. How should i go about it?
 
You learn how to make a knife, by going out and making a knife...

Even if the blade fails down the line, you still are going to learn a few new things along the way...
It's better to start and learn what yoiu can, then your next attempt will be built on what you have learned...

I toss a lot of knives out that fail a flex test or that I screw up somehow,,,But I still think it's worth starting a new one.
You will learn,,,you will learn by doiing,,,it's the only way to learn too.
Like when a blade snapped on that one guy who tried to smack it with a hammer after it was fully hard.
Chances are that he will never forget it...
 
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