O-1?

cmott69

cmott69

Joined
Sep 11, 2004
Messages
237
I am wanting to make a big camp knife sort of barong style nothing fancy.
How would O-1 be as an alternative to 5160?.

I am only set up for stock removal at this time and O-1 is the only thing I can find in the sizes I would need, and gotta kep in mind the ease of heat treatment.


Any makers in Central Arkansas?
Any help would be welcome.
 
Could I heat treat a small O-1 blade on my Stoves bright red electric burner, and how long would I have to let it sit on the burner.
 
I probably wouldn't do it on my "bright red electric burner". You're going to get very uneven heating, and I really don't think you could get it hot enough for a good quench. You need a heat source that heats the entire blade evenly. Depending on the size of the knife, you could try Wayne Goddard's single brick forge. For small knives it works amazingly well. I suppose a charcoal fire with a good draw could do it, although I've never tried it. When I was doing my own ht on carbon steel blades, I used the one-brick forge setup. Of course, I made smaller knives. You can do up to about a 6"x11/2" blade in it.
 
try a turkey fryer :) I did 2 on that at first :)
 
can you really get a blade to 1550 on a turkey fryer?? I assume you can, but wouldnt want to have to....
 
:D It was 2 small 2.5" blades...worked pretty good. I think its the intruduction to oxygen through the burner shape that gets it that hot.
 
ok for a small blade you can get away with using a propane weed burner attachment that hooks right to your tank gets plenty hot and has wide flame especially if ou mod the opening a little
 
I think by far the easiest way to do this is to go on ebay or to ellis refractory, buy a few SOFT firebricks. You need soft.....

They wont run you any more than a few bucks each and you technically only need one, but get 4.....

Get the long ones, 9" by i think 3-4". Take a 1.5-2" wood drill bit and drill all the way through lengthwise. Then drill a 3/8" hole so it interestects that lengthwise hole at a tangent to the top. This will cause the heat to swirl around the chamber. With this, you can use a 30$ benz-o-matic torch and HT carbon steels up to 5" pretty easilly....there aint much easier than that unless you want to do it freehand with a torch or weed burner, but doing that as a maker who hasnt ht'd before can easilly result in destroyed blades if you don't know what youre doing, how to evenly torch heat etc etc...

do a search for a one brick forge and you can be set up for HT for about 40$, including torch, bricks and oil and will have a much more controlled environment to learn in.... Just my 2 cents!
 
You could certainly use a kiln, but if its designed for firing pottery you need to figure out if you can open the kiln while hot AND youll need to figure out how to get that blade out and quenched in the right amount of time. For 0-1 youll have a few seconds, so it wont be as big a deal.

Unless you already own a kiln or can get one for free, though, your best bet will be to make something or put down the cash for something specific to knives.
 
It's the only thing I'vew ever used--never thought of any other way to heat. Course, I've burned off my lashes when opening.
 
Like i said, with O-1 you should be okay so long as you get that blade down below the nose in a few seconds. Its much more forgiving than, say, 1095, that you need to get out of that forge and into the oil in such a short time that its nearly impossible....I try to get 1095 to the oil in less than a second, and wouldnt want to have to lean into a kiln to grab it, haha!

A kiln will work just fine for 0-1, i think. Stand the blade on its spine so you dont get warpind due to one side being unevenly heated.
 
THANKS PARDS
FOR YEARS I HAVE JUST BEEN REGRINDING SOMEONE ELSES BLADES TO MY OWN SHAPE BUT I HAVE BEEN HANKERIN TO DO MY OWN OUT OFSOMETHING OTHER THAN 440. I DO HAVE AN ACETYLENE OUTFIT AND MIG / TIG X C. I EVEN BOUGHT MY OWN OVEN LAREGE ENOUGH FOR THE BIGGEST BOWIE , NOT NEW BUT LIKE NEW AND HAD SEEN VERY LITTLE USE. I LOADED UP A FEW OF MY BLADES NEATLY WRAPPED IN sTAINLESS STEEL FOILK AND STANDING VERTICLE ON THE BACK OF THE BLADE SPACED JUST RIGHT FROM EACH OTHER AND SET IT AND HAD TO GO ON A SERVICE CALL RUN AND WHEN I CAME BACK I OPENED THE OVEN TO FIND THAT THE THERMOSTAT HAD GONE SOUTH. NOW HOW HOT WILL A 220 FURNACE GET IF THE THERMOSTAT FAILS. WELL MY FIREBRICK HAD EVEN MELTED AND MOST OF IT WAS LAYING IN THE BOTTOM AMONGST THE KNIVES. I DID TRY TO REMOVE THE CARBON FROM ONE OF THE BLADES THAT HAD NOT WARPED TOOOO0 BAD. HA HA I RUINED SEVERAL NEW BELTS TRYING TO REMOVE IT TO NO AVAIL.
 
If it melted your bricks, those blades are junk anyways. They would have been so overheated that no amount of tempering could get them to a state where they wouldnt be brittle and useless.....if they are at all salvagable, youre gonna need to normalized them all over again, but id be worried about the effects of that extreme heat....lucky you didnt burn down your house....
 
Well that was 30 years ago anyway. I scrapped all of them but was just curious and that was the reason for sanding on the best of the them just to see what would happen. Like I said that was about the early 70's. I had a young friend who saw me making knives and he asked me if he could watch and I said sure. Well he went home and bought him a grinder like mine. He came back a couple times more to see how I did flat grinding. THis man went on to be one of the best in the world. Who was that man. Willie Rigney was his name. He moved away from Indiana to Kentucky and is now retired. Sure wish I could get him to show me some things now. Ha
Longline Charlie
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top