Pre heat treated steel?

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Mar 5, 2012
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Anyone know of any pre heat treated steel? I'm not really confident in my abilities to do that(All I have is a plumber sized propane tank with a bernzomatic tip). If I could choose, I would want D2, or a 10XX series steel. Pretty much open to all suggestions being that I couldn't find ANY pre heat treated steel.
 
If you could find it already heattreated,how would you profile it,drill pin holes,grind the bevels?You are much better off sending out for heattreat.

Stan
 
Stan is correct, the cost of working hardened steel would be much higher than buying annealed steel and sending it out for H/T.
 
Stan and Darrin are right. While some makers, especially in folders, will harden the blade before grinding bevels, the profiling and drilling are done first as those are just a pain in hardened steel. Especially with drilling- you'd have to use carbide, with the attendant breakage when learning to use carbide tooling. Your drill press would need to be a good solid one with high speed. You'd go through a lot of abrasives profiling and beveling, and a lot more time. Bandsawing your rough profile would be nearly out of the question- to keep yourself in blades capable of it would probably be cost prohibitive and certainly not cost effective. And, after making a few knives this way, especially blades of any size, you would probably never want to look at a grinder or drill press again.

Just thought I'd add some details to aid in discouraging you from this path. I'd go with Paul Bos or Peters Heat Treating- not bad at all if you send them in batches.
 
Stan and Darrin and Salem are right.

...sorry, couldn't help myself just there...
 
I'm currently making a knife from pre-hardened steel. My advice is make small knives from thin stock. I profile with an angle grinder, leaving enough room to remove the heat affected zone afterward. I use stick tangs and no pins. Get the best belts you can find for grinding.
 
Listen to Nathan....he is knowledgeable, and has a 3 ton mini mill.
Seriously...If you do D-2 and it will fit in my oven...I will heat treat your first one free.
 
Get yourself a length of 1075,1084, or 1095. Get working and take it to the point where you believe it is ready to be heat treated. Then contact Darrin (posted above) and send him your knife along with a very reasonable fee. He will return your knife with a great heat treat and ready for you to finish!!

If you do knives in batches, Peter's Heat Treat is excellent.
 
It can be done, I have worked allot of pre-hardened steel but it is more difficult and will require lots of good sharp belts and carbide drill bits. I find that it is realitivly cost efficient if you work on only a few knives like me. I was able to obtain hardened D2 and T1 in the form of large planer blades. you can get them here if you want to look v
http://globaltooling.bizhosting.com/products/planer-knives.html

am I allowed to post that?

As others have mentioned it is much easier to work softer steels, and it is probably a better idea.
 
Forgot about the drilling of the holes. Yeah, not enthused with doing that. I'm gonna stick with annealed steal, most likely D2. Think I'm going to take JBS up on his offer. I think if I end up liking making knives(who am I kidding, this is a guaranteed!), I'll just stick with him. I'll go order the steel tommorow.
 
Salem Straub said:
Stan and Darrin are right. While some makers, especially in folders, will harden the blade before grinding bevels, the profiling and drilling are done first as those are just a pain in hardened steel. Especially with drilling- you'd have to use carbide, with the attendant breakage when learning to use carbide tooling. Your drill press would need to be a good solid one with high speed. You'd go through a lot of abrasives profiling and beveling, and a lot more time. Bandsawing your rough profile would be nearly out of the question- to keep yourself in blades capable of it would probably be cost prohibitive and certainly not cost effective. And, after making a few knives this way, especially blades of any size, you would probably never want to look at a grinder or drill press again.

Just thought I'd add some details to aid in discouraging you from this path. I'd go with Paul Bos or Peters Heat Treating- not bad at all if you send them in batches.
Click to expand...

Darrin Sanders is a very good man to work with for your heat treating , nothing against Paul or Peters of course. If your looking for a HUGE bang for your buck Darrin is the man.
 
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