circular saw blade knife

K

kielbasavw

Joined
Feb 17, 2014
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Hello I wanted to play around with another hobby (I have too many) and make some knives. I have already started making one and I have a few questions on what I should be doing next or if im even going in the right direction.

I started with a diablo circular saw metal cutting blade, and cut out a couple blanks from it. I used a grinder/cut off wheel, them used a bench grinder to get the rough shape. After that I used a belt sander to smooth it all out, and started using files. I found that the material wasnt too hard to work with from the start. I am unsure if heat treating and tempering is still necessary since the saw blade is hardened to begin with, but I figure using the cut off wheel might have heated the edges up enough to remove the hardness on the edge.

What do you guys think? I still need to even out the edge some before I even start to make it sharp or harden/temper.

I think the shape of the knife is pretty awesome fits comfortably in my hand and the angle everything is at just feels right. Not bad for a first time id like to think! Thanks guys

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Welcome to Shop talk.
Filling out the info in your profile is a good thing to do.


Now for the bad news - The saw blade is not hardened...and will not harden in HT. It is a carbide tipped blade that is made to take great shock and stress...not to get hard. the only hard part is the carbide tips. The alloy is unknown, buy is most likely a high chromium-nickel steel with low carbon content.

The knife will not stay sharp. It is what we call a KSO - Knife Shaped Object.
 
I make quite a bit of knives out of circular saw blades. They may not be as great as a bar of 1095 or 1084, but they get the job done. The way you cut them out looks like a waste of time and a pain in the arse, i usually cut it in two, then cut the halves into section for blades, usually making smaller pieces into smaller knives, and larger ones into larger knives. I see if you take from the wider part to make a small knife it is a waste of steel. As for HT, half of them (well at least to me) dont need HT, mainly because they are suitable enough already, sometimes to hard but I just temper them down a bit if so. You have no idea what steel type the blades are made of, so HT may not even be worth it. You should always spark test them before you even start to cut them out. Most of them hold a nice edge with the original HT anyway, but if you are worried about ruining the steel from cutting them out, next time just spray some water on the steel while you cut it to make sure it doesn't overheat the steel.

Just thought I would share some of the ones I made from saw blades




Gary
 
Oh yeah and stay away from carbide tipped blades like Stacy said, the make terrible blades. The only reason i use saw blades is because they were free to me and I am to cheap and young to order a nice piece of steel. I will eventually order some though
 
If you look at the original blade, it has groves cut out for shock absorption, I tried to make the best of the usuable material available.

Whats a spark test? And it only took me about 2 hours total to get where I am at now.
 
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