beginner steel

Hillbilly81

New Member
I was wondering if anyone could give me an idea of what kind of steel is a good beginning steel? I have an old Nicholson file was thinking of using for my first knife. I've heard to start with A2 or 1084. Thank you for any info.
 
Well, it's going to depend on whether or not you're going to be forging the steel or be doing strictly stock removal. If you're forging I'd go with the 1084. It's easy to work with and simple to heat treat. A2, on the other hand, has to be forged at high heats and even then it's not going to be all that easy to move. It's also going to be easy to mess up if you forge it at the wrong heat. On top of that you'll probably have to send it out for heat treatment. Which reminds me, it can't be normalized and annealing takes more than a bucket of wood ash to slow the cooling.

Now if you want to do stock removal and you get the A2 in an annnealed form then that's another matter; but it's still going to need more than a toaster oven to temper. Something like 1084 would probably be a better bet still. It's easy to grind and you can heat treat it yourself with less expensive equiptment.

Doug Lester
 
One of the simpliest steels to both forge and heat treat in my opinion would be 5160. You can do a marginal job and still end up with a good knife.
 
That depends... like Doug mentioned, are you planning on stock removal? Forging?
Are you going to attempt to heat treat it yourself? What kind of equipment do you have?
 
I've used O1 for my first few knives, and it's been a very solid performer thus far. Easy to grind (file) and finish.I did however send it out for heat treat to Peter's Heat Treating, since I don't have the equipment for that yet. The other nice thing about O1 is that you can very easily find it in precision ground flat stock, which helps for getting the blade a nice consistent thickness when stock removing.

Overall, I think its a great steel to start off with, though!
 
What kind of grinder? If you have a belt sander you could temper back the file (two cycles in the toaster oven at 400-450 degrees, two hours each) and regrind it into a blade without having to totally re-HT it. Keep it cool.

I wouldn't try to do it with a bench grinder though. Hard to control and way too easy to build up excess heat.

If you're going to send out for HT (Peters' does a great job) you can use whatever steel you like. I really like precision-ground O1 but 1080/1984 makes a very good knife too and is less expensive. A2 is a good choice for a tough blade that's more corrosion-resistant than O1 or 10xx series but not really "stainless".
 
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If you send out for heat treat, just about any steel normally used for knives would be a good choice, A2 would be an excellent choice for a hunter, EDC, skinner, when heat treated properly it takes a very good edge and holds it very well, but you can't go wrong with good old O1 either. For good prices on either in precision ground, check out Amtektool.com good to deal with, and you can buy steel in 18 inch lengths, 1 bar at a time. If you heat treat yourself, I would stick with 1080 or some of the other 10xx steels and make the one brick forge to do the heat treat in.
Dale
 
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