Closest steel to Opinel Carbon for Knife Making

T

TangoDelta

Joined
Apr 8, 2021
Messages
18
Hi Everyone - I am new to the forum - fairly practical but don’t know much about knife making in terms of different steels, hardening, annealing etc... but ... I absolutely love the steel used in my Carbone Opinel folding knife and would love to make a fixed blade knife from a similar/ the same steel.

I am quite happy to buy a steel that just requires grinding/ shaping if that is possible - but I really do want it to be as close to the opinel carbon as possible. I have used a lot of knives in my time and I can’t stand a really hard steel that you can’t sharpen quickly with a few strokes. Of all the knives I have used, this little opinel has my favourite blade.

Looking forward to some suggestions. I am based in the UK.

Many thanks
 
Thanks. And then how would I need to treat these two steels to get them to what I am looking for?
 
Opinel has been using consistently 1065 (I believe ?) for the carbon steel blades and 12C27 for the stainless blades. Every steel has its heat treating "recipe". You can actually use many carbon steels but they must match your heat treating skills / equipment. For all I know, 1075 is a peach. Almost a "air hardening" steel. Understand, straight from the forge to the grinder. Leaked to me by some random knife maker. Long rant for a short ending : use a steel you can manage with no problems. I'm confident the result will be brilliant. I forgot to add, the Bompertuis foundery in France has a fairly good reputation for cutlery steels...
 
herisson said:
Opinel has been using consistently 1065 (I believe ?) for the carbon steel blades and 12C27 for the stainless blades. Every steel has its heat treating "recipe". You can actually use many carbon steels but they must match your heat treating skills / equipment. For all I know, 1075 is a peach. Almost a "air hardening" steel. Understand, straight from the forge to the grinder. Leaked to me by some random knife maker. Long rant for a short ending : use a steel you can manage with no problems. I'm confident the result will be brilliant. I forgot to add, the Bompertuis foundery in France has a fairly good reputation for cutlery steels...
Click to expand...
Just a word of caution 1075 is not an air hardening steel and you cannot simply heat it up in a forge let it cool and go to the grinder and produce a knife. It still needs to be heated to critical temperature then quenched in oil to harden followed by tempering at a lower temperature like 400f as an example for 2 hours for 2 cycles. After the blade is heat treated then you can turn it into a finished knife.
 
TangoDelta said:
When you say "air hardening steel" - what do you mean?
Click to expand...
1075 is not a air hardening steel. Air hardening steels are steels like A2 that can be heated to a high temperature and soaked at that temperature for a period of time then “quenched” by clamping in plates and using compressed air to harden the blade. You need specific alloys in the steel to be able to do that and the simple 10xx series of steels and most other simple high carbon steels will not harden fully that way.
 
Joshua Fisher said:
1075 is not a air hardening steel. Air hardening steels are steels like A2 that can be heated to a high temperature and soaked at that temperature for a period of time then “quenched” by clamping in plates and using compressed air to harden the blade. You need specific alloys in the steel to be able to do that and the simple 10xx series of steels and most other simple high carbon steels will not harden fully that way.
Click to expand...
Thanks for setting that straight. Understandably, the more carbon you have in the steel, the more precise the tempering process must be.
 
So I have been doing some research and I can get 1080 in the UK and I am told this is a very forgiving steel for a newbie. Spent lots of last night reading forums and posts and beginning to understand that it is as much what you do with the steel as the steel itself. That being said, I want to start with a known quantity so that I can ask to have “my hand held” through the process....

I am a hunting guide by profession so I use a knife for skinning/ butchering - I don’t use it to cut trees, build log cabins, drop behind enemy lines, start fires with it etc! I constantly resharpen knives as I use them - same when I am cooking - and would much rather a knife that resharpens easily than one that holds an edge longer.
Basically I want a slightly bigger carbon opinel in a sheath.
And maybe I would try and make a few “Japanese kitchen knives”.

Been looking at forging and looks like fun, so quite happy to bash a knife shape out rather than grinding one out...
 
8670 is very durable steel with a wide temperature band for properly hardening (about 1500-1600 will land acceptable results), which makes it great for the home heat treater. Personally though, I could not get it right, so I started sending my blades off for HT.
 
TangoDelta said:
Any thoughts on using 8670 (a modified 5160) for doing this project. I don’t have a proper heat treating oven - just the wife’s kitchen - and a home made charcoal forge...
Click to expand...
I personally have found that 8670 gives very good results even with simple heat treating methods, I would highly recommend it. Worst case you can always send it out for heat treating and it will give you a very tough blade that’s easy to sharpen, I like to leave it between 61-63 depending on the knife.
 
Thank you to everyone for your help so far.
I bought some 8670 from GFS knife supplies in the UK as they recommended it as one of the easiest heat treatments for a beginner.

I started with just doing stock removal and fashioned and approximation of an opinel blade - about the same thickness - but with a tang.

I got it pretty close to finished dimensions with and belt sanding machine, file and used soem Emery paper to take most of the marks out.

I then heated it to non-magnetic in some charcoal with a blower made from a copper pipe attached to a heat gun.

Quenched in Rapeseed oil (I think this is what Canola oil is called in the UK).

I then tempered for 1.5 hrs at 400 F in the kitchen oven whilst the wife was away! I did buy an oven thermometer.

I made a very basic handle of bamboo wrapped in cord just so I can test it.

Seems pretty sharp - shaves my arm, cuts paper etc.

Tip bends - I don’t know if this would be a product of overheating/ under heating or because it is profiled very thin?

I am interested in improving from here....

Would a “one brick forge” be enough to bring a small 6inch blade to non-magnetic and hot enough to harden?

If a blade doesn’t harden on the quench can you just try again or must you anneal the blade and start again?

Here are a few photos...



wnC3P66.jpg

qO39iiM.jpg

nXGh4w2.jpg
 
When you say tip bends, do you mean it bends and stays bent or does it flex back to straight?
From the blistering on the blade I would say it was way over heated.
 
With the way it looks way over heated you may have burnt most othe carbon out of the tip so it didn't harden. You may have a significant amount of decarb to deal with also.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top