lawnmower blade steel is not a mystery steel

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Crawdaddy

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lawnmower blade steel is not a mystery steel. lawnmower blade steel is not an oil quench steel. if anyone had laid aside their pride and asked i would have told you. but you had to come at me with insults, insults are not constructive criticism. if you would have bothered to ask if maybe i had figured something out, instead i would have been all too happy to inform you

Lawnmower blade steel is not an oil quench steel, it is a water / brine quench steel. please stop insulting people and go test it for yourself

i have found the best results from heating my brine to about 130 to 145 F , and you have to get the steel to critical just like any other steel, when you go to quench you have to do it fast, water quench steel does not like to be put in slowly, you have to almost shove it in. test with a file, you should get a skating glass sound just like any other steel. i then temper the steel in a toaster oven at 325 for 2 hours per cycle and 3 cycles total.

i have made about 40 or 50 blades using this method, not one or two. so please go get a lawnmower blade and you try it for yourself

oh and quit assuming because you haven't been able to figure it out, someone else hasn't either.

and have a nice day
 
Crawdaddy said:
lawnmower blade steel is not a mystery steel. lawnmower blade steel is not an oil quench steel. if anyone had laid aside their pride and asked i would have told you. but you had to come at me with insults, insults are not constructive criticism. if you would have bothered to ask if maybe i had figured something out, instead i would have been all too happy to inform you

Lawnmower blade steel is not an oil quench steel, it is a water / brine quench steel. please stop insulting people and go test it for yourself

i have found the best results from heating my brine to about 130 to 145 F , and you have to get the steel to critical just like any other steel, when you go to quench you have to do it fast, water quench steel does not like to be put in slowly, you have to almost shove it in. test with a file, you should get a skating glass sound just like any other steel. i then temper the steel in a toaster oven at 325 for 2 hours per cycle and 3 cycles total.

i have made about 40 or 50 blades using this method, not one or two. so please go get a lawnmower blade and you try it for yourself

oh and quit assuming because you haven't been able to figure it out, someone else hasn't either.

and have a nice day
Click to expand...

I assume that this is a response to this

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/1205977-A-Little-Scandi-Skinner

All your posts have been edited and removed, but the comments by others are still there and I don't consider them to be insulting.



What steel is it then ? and what are your hardness testing results?


If you have made 50 blades with this method, they surely did not come from the same blade.

Why would you want to redo all your testing with each new piece of steel?



If you're using free used blades, why put all that work into a blade and have it crack, possibly even in a customer's hands

If you're buying them, why not just use cheaper known steel ?
Compared to the abrasives, epoxy, handle material and time I've spent steel is the cheapest thing there is.

I'd fiddle with mystery steel for my own fun, but not on something I've sold.
 
12345678910 said:
I assume that this is a response to this

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/1205977-A-Little-Scandi-Skinner

All your posts have been edited and removed, but the comments by others are still there and I don't consider them to be insulting.



What steel is it then ? and what are your hardness testing results?


If you have made 50 blades with this method, they surely did not come from the same blade.

Why would you want to redo all your testing with each new piece of steel?



If you're using free used blades, why put all that work into a blade and have it crack, possibly even in a customer's hands

If you're buying them, why not just use cheaper known steel ?
Compared to the abrasives, epoxy, handle material and time I've spent steel is the cheapest thing there is.

I'd fiddle with mystery steel for my own fun, but not on something I've sold.
Click to expand...



you come to me with a closed mind, i have given you my heat treating methods, anything further i would say would be pointless. go test it for yourself, and the blacksmith / metullurgist i learned this from told me that the steel is close to 1084 in composition, i do not know where he got his information, all i know is i have gotten good results

have a nice day
 
Sorry, as I see it there are too many drawbacks to using a lawnmower blade. If it's a used blade, besides the fact I don't know exactly what type of steel it is made of, it stands a good chance of having been fractured in it's use of cutting grass. No point in buying new mower blades, as I can get Aldo's 1084 for about the same price if not cheaper.
 
What is the composition of the blades? Carbon, chromium, manganese etc in percentages? If you don't know, it's mystery steel. This isn't closed mindedness, just reality.
 
All I can read from this initial post is 'sour grapes'. Goes with the territory of catering specialty knives to fusspots, I suppose.
Though in fact I do think my 25 year old Honda riding mower has pretty darn good steel spinning under the deck or I'd have been sharpening it a lot more often. Truck/car/wagon springs from time immemorial are also an excellent source for blade steel. Only, those makers were and still are not into offering hoity toity stainless-pretty products because they are preoccupied with trying to achieve best ways to keep blades sharp and durable. Sort of like many on here's quest for optimum knife steel.
 
You've been on here for close to 2 years as per your join date. So you must know that this kind of assertion is just inviting criticism, and accepting that doesn't seem to be your forte.
Just sayin'
 
Since you brought this out in the Shop Talk forum, I will respond to it openly.

Testing and study has already been done on lawn mower blades. It has been discussed on this forum and others regularly, and a search would find those discussions. Mower blades are generally low carbon high alloy steel designed by engineers to bend not break. Except for a few blades made for professional landscaping equipment ( like used on golf courses) they are not 1095, 1084, 5160, etc. as often claimed. The alloy is basically a 1548 alloy.....1% manganese and .45% carbon. While a mower blade will get hard in a brine quench, so will A36. I wouldn't want a knife made from that either. There are several issues with the structures formed that don't make it the best knife. Due to the high pearlite percentage as well as widely distributed martensite, it will not hold an edge well for one thing.

Metallurgically, coarse pearlite will skate a file and it is not what we want in a knife. Metallurgically, three two hour tempers for any steel that is not a stainless steel with high RA is pointless. On a simple alloy carbon steel suitable for knives, a one hour temper at 400F will temper the brittle martensite created in the quench and convert any RA to new martensite, and a second temper will convert the new martensite to tempered martensite.

Something that many folks don't understand is that the lower the carbon content, the higher the tempering temperature. 1045 is tempered at 800F to make it less brittle after quench.
5160 needs 450F for most knife purposes, and 500F isn't too high for blades that get heavy impact use. 325F is considered a snap temper to prevent cracking on high alloy stainless and tools steels in cryo, but is too low for almost any normal knife blade.
At 325 on a lawn mower blade knife, all you are doing is pulling only a small amount of the brittleness out of the steel to save the most of the hardness that was created in the quench. Blade breakage in use is going to be a higher risk. Because of the lack of carbon, the hardness will only be in the low to mid Rc50's. Many mower blades won't harden and temper properly without dropping into the Rc40's.

Just for kicks I looked up the ASM specs on 1548 (1045 with high manganese):
Harden by austenitizing at 1550°F
Quench in a "less severe quenchant" to avoid cracking (Does not specify type. Probably mostly a concern for thicker section parts)
Temper at 800-1000°F
As quenched hardness Rc55
Tempered at 325°F hardness Rc53; tempered at 600°F hardness Rc50
 
I don't know who told you that mower blades are the equivalent of 1084 but they are DEAD WRONG, I don't care who he is, PERIOD. You come here with a few knives under your belt and talk down to knowledgeable people who are offering CONSTRUCTIVE criticism when you would be much better off swallowing your pride and heeding their advice. These people didn't get where they are by being ignorant to any aspect of knifemaking including mower blade steel. If promise you that if mower blades made a good knife many people would be using them and these same people would freely instruct you on how to get the most out of them.
Stacy (as usual) just provided quite a bit of good info.. Whether you choose to use that info. is totally up to you. But let me tell you that coming here and "throwing rocks" at people who are only trying to help you wont get you very far at all in the knife community.
 
hello everybody,
first i was not trying to start a brawl, i asked for constructive criticism, i got a statement on viagra, that imo is not constructive criticism, that is raggin. i have been told i have no sense of humor, and that is probably correct. my brain works off of why and why not, imperically based data as much as i can. kind of leaves out a sense of humor. sorry guys that is just the way i am. i did do an internet search, that was a year ago, prior to joining the forum, and i could not find the level of information that Stacy has provided in his response here. and that is the information i was looking for. the thought i had in my head was that nobody, since i could find no discussion on the subject , had done any extensive research, and in his viagra comment he said oil quench i assumed, which is wrong on my part, that everybody was only testing with oil quench, which i have not been doing, i have been using brine. i know i don't have years or thousands of knives under my belt, but i'm the kind of guy who wants to know why not. Stacy has finally given me that answer. so now i know about the mower blade steel and all the testing that has been done. the knowledge is constructive in nature, not raggin. i came to the forum looking for professionals to hang out with and learn from. not to get ragged on. again my apologies for not having a sense of humor.
as far as sending my work out, i don't want to do that, i want to learn how to do it myself, and work with steels that i can learn how to do it myself. i know it's a quirk, but not impossible, we are building knives not space shuttle parts, knives have been made for hundreds plus years. techniques to get the job done, i wanna learn.
so Stacy, this is what i was looking for, this is what i consider constructive criticism, and if it is not out of line would it be possible for you to write up a sticky and post it for the future people who would come here, so us newbies are not ticking off the whole planet.

some of the other feedback i had gotten was helpful, and constructive, and that is what i am looking for, i am not a member of your old boy network here and i do not know all the inside jokes, etc. all i know is what is put in front of me at the time, and i apologize for finding it offensive, but imo it was.

and that was the only real issue i had, with all this, now i can see it's been tested etc. i'm good.

thank you all for your time and your input on this, but most of all thank you Stacy for taking the time to show some evidence that it's been done, that is helpful

oh and i did join the forum 2 years ago, but i never spent any time on here, even lurking. i don't interact well on forum type sites as is evidenced by all this, last month when i started posting is when i truly started here. sorry for the confusion, but my house burned to the ground, i've kind of been out of the world for a while. and i'm just trying to pull some pieces together and get started again

have a nice day
 
No problem and welcome back to the world. I hope thing continue to improve for you.

I have a lot of good knife steel, and I would be glade to send you some. Send me a PM.

I usually add some of these posts to the stickies, and I will do that with this thread. When I get my book done, most all of them will be there. It is coming along slowly.

This is the Bladeforums search engine, It finds all sorts of old threads and topics:
https://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=011197018607028182644:qfobr3dlcra
 
bladsmth said:
No problem and welcome back to the world. I hope thing continue to improve for you.

I have a lot of good knife steel, and I would be glade to send you some. Send me a PM.

I usually add some of these posts to the stickies, and I will do that with this thread. When I get my book done, most all of them will be there. It is coming along slowly.

This is the Bladeforums search engine, It finds all sorts of old threads and topics:
https://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=011197018607028182644:qfobr3dlcra
Click to expand...

thank you again Stacy
 
Crawdaddy said:
my house burned to the ground, i've kind of been out of the world for a while. and i'm just trying to pull some pieces together and get started again

have a nice day
Click to expand...
I lost all to a house fire 5 years ago, so I know how you feel. Funny how we take the small things for granted until they are gone. I REALLY appreciate my can opener now :D.

Just to let you know, eventually it does get back to normal.
 
Crawdaddy said:
i asked for constructive criticism, i got a statement on viagra
Click to expand...


I wonder if I smashed up a couple of viagra on my quench plates if that would work the same as putting them in the quench oil? ;0)

crawdaddy you should add something to your signature about not having a sense of humor, kinda warn people off LOL
 
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I must stay, I've seen a lot of people come and go around here and it is refreshing to see someone willing to sacrifice their sacred cow after being introduced to the facts. My hat is off to both Crawdaddy and Stacy for being able to work things out.
Jason
 
John Katt said:
I wonder if I smashed up a couple of viagra on my quench plates if that would work the same as putting them in the quench oil? ;0)

crawdaddy you should add something to your signature about not having a sense of humor, kinda warn people off LOL
Click to expand...

i will edit my deal now, i'm also a hermit, i'll put that as welll :)
 
NC Biker said:
I lost all to a house fire 5 years ago, so I know how you feel. Funny how we take the small things for granted until they are gone. I REALLY appreciate my can opener now :D.

Just to let you know, eventually it does get back to normal.
Click to expand...

thank you, i miss my own private bathroom :)
 
jawilder said:
I must stay, I've seen a lot of people come and go around here and it is refreshing to see someone willing to sacrifice their sacred cow after being introduced to the facts. My hat is off to both Crawdaddy and Stacy for being able to work things out.
Jason
Click to expand...

thank you,
 
Shows the integrity of the site and its members to be able to have an issue and work through it and come back and save face on all ends. You are all class acts in my book!

Jay
 
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