Recipe for sawblade steel

[Whit]

Lots of talk/ examples of using sawblade steel on here lately. Can someone run me through the entire process they are using? Include cutting out the blade, normalizing, annealing, grinding, heat treating. Whatever order you do them in. I recently cut up a couple of blades with a plasma torch. The first one came out great, the second one cracked big time in the quench. Just curious to see what everyone else is doing. Thanks,

Whit

 

[peter nap]

The heat treat depends on the steel Whit. The profile cutting is almoast always done with an old Porter Cable saw with a metal cutting blade. Take your time and it will and has profiled things out of 3/4" steel!

 

[Don Hanson III]

Back in the early 90's I was making around 300 knives a year out of old circular saw blades. I would cut them out with a oxy acl torch, anneal them, profile, grind bevels, drill holes, heat treat, put handles on and finish. I never had a blade crack with an oil quench. The circular saw blades I was using did not act like L6 but more like 10XX simple carbon steels. I would heat to nonmagnetic, quench in oil and temper in a toster oven at 400 deg. They were good performing blades. This was all done before I started doing much forging. I have also forged some blades out of circular saw steel with good results. Most of the blades I make now are out of known steels - 1084,1095,1075,W1,W2 and damascus. Hope this helps

Don Hansonlll sunfishforge.com

 

[Todd Robbins]

Whit
I cut the sawblades I use into strips the approximate size I need with a cutoff wheel on a 4 1/2" angle grinder. Then I forge and grind the blade just like I would any other steel. I generally edge quench in hydraulic fluid, and begin tempering at 375 degrees, doing the brass rod test to determine the final tempering temp. (I do this on 1 knife blade out of every sawblade). I usually will do a test quench on a small strip out of each blade, also, to make sure it'll get hard. This probably isn't necessary on the older blades that don't have carbide cutters braised on, but is a must on the newer blades. I have a stack of about 15 or 20 brand new 24" blades that won't harden. Hope that helps.

Todd