First journey with Elmax steel

Lerch

Well-Known Member
I recently bought a couple of sticks of 5/32" Elmax stainless from USA Knifemaker to make 3 Camp/skinning knives for a elk hunt I leave for on next thursday. I figured i would post the results along the way of the process along the way so here is the first one.

big stuff here lol
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steve
 
So first grinds are done now. Profile on flat platen with a 60 grit ceramic belt, i dont have a plasma cutter or a saw to cut the steel with so i use my business chop saw to cut the 1.5" bars and then grind the profile out on the belts ( a pain in the butt and i chews belts up quick) Here is profile and start of the grind on two of the blades (there will be 3 total) yes i know there is a little ridge in the grind but i iron that out in with the 80 and 120 grit belts
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here is the side view after the grind is done down to 320 grit
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here is the view of the spine and the thumb/palm grips , i thought these would look nice and I figured if we were trying to work through a big joint or something on one of the elk we can place our off hand palm on the spine for leverage and the spine work would allow for a little more traction
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thats all so far, there in the heat treat right now, guess i will see them in a hour or so!!

steve
 
They look good so far, Im interested to hear how you like that steel.. Im getting ready to buy a few different stainless to try and test myself.

Have fun! and God Bless
 
Thanks

I like the steel alot so far, when i was profiling the blades from the square steel i was a little concerned at first as it seemed like it was really hard to grind. the pressure was very consistant but it just seemed like i had to really power into the blank to grind to the profile. When i got to doing the hollow grind the steel seemed very tough but i ground very consistanly and smoothly. The metal also seemed to take a very nice soft polish as soon as i got to the 120 grit belts, i am not sure about a mirror finish since all of these blades will be bead blasted after the heat treat but so far i like it alot. I have only worked with 440C and CPM154 before this and I like the Elmax a lot more than 440c and while i think that 154 grinds away easier this seemed very consistant and smooth. The toughness test will come after my 7 WSM and 180gr sierra SMK meets a bull elk at about 500yds!! I plan on putting my blade through hell on the elk and letting the other 2 rest so we can see how awesome this stuff is !!

steve
 
No dad is staying back on this hunt, he has kicked to much butt the last 2 deer seasons and this was a draw only tag. BJ Bailey who works with us is hunting with me, you might have met him at the NRA banquets , he is the little short guy at the shop (when your 6'4" everyone is short though lol)
 
Here they are out of the heat treat. Heat treating was done in EvenHeat oven as so, ramp to 1400deg and hold for 30 min then 1980deg for 45min then quench on aluminum plates.
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there nice and cooled off now so its into a -375deg bath for the night, tomorrow tempering starts!

steve
 
Let us know what hardness you get. My only concern for you is the duration of the soak time. Everything I've read on Elmax says 15min and not to oversoak. I am definitely not an authority on heat treating, but you may want to look into it. There are several threads here about it with references from the Elmax rep. Good luck.
-John
 
See I had read a few posts and other stuff that said a 15min soak time at temp but when i googled "elmax heat treating" I foudn a .pdf file from UDDEHOLM that said min heat treating time 30 minutes and max 1hr. so i just shot for the middle ground as directed by the steel producer. i guess we will jsut see, i have one more blade in it that i may do for the 15 min soak and compare the two, that may give some answers. that one hopefully will be heat treated tonight, im running low on time lol!!!!!!

steve
 
Well some stuff says i am heat treating it correctly and some says i am soaking it too long. i will try 2100deg for 15min on the last blade and we will do one elk a piece with each blade and maybe have some results

what is the effect of soaking a blade to long at autstentizing temp??
 
Well i did the heat treating method as described by Steven Kelly in the post you recommended John,

hold at 1200deg for 30min
stress relive for 30min at 1500deg
soak at 2000deg for 15 min
cryo
temper at 390 for 2 hrs
temper at 350 for 2 hrs

so I will have two knives done by the heat treating and tempering method in the Uddelhom pdf file and one done by method recommended by their metallurgist . My knife will be the one done by the metallurgist recommended method and the 2 done by the method on the pdf file will go to my buddy and man who owns the land we are hunting on in WY. If all goes well then we will kill 2 elk and each elk will only be cleaned by the shooters knife so while not a perfect test by any means maybe some results will be apparent, if not it sure will be fun :)

steve
 
Well i did the heat treating method as described by Steven Kelly in the post you recommended John,

hold at 1200deg for 30min
stress relive for 30min at 1500deg
soak at 2000deg for 15 min
cryo
temper at 390 for 2 hrs
temper at 350 for 2 hrs

so I will have two knives done by the heat treating and tempering method in the Uddelhom pdf file and one done by method recommended by their metallurgist . My knife will be the one done by the metallurgist recommended method and the 2 done by the method on the pdf file will go to my buddy and man who owns the land we are hunting on in WY. If all goes well then we will kill 2 elk and each elk will only be cleaned by the shooters knife so while not a perfect test by any means maybe some results will be apparent, if not it sure will be fun :)

steve

sounds like absolutely fun test of the steel !!!
 
thanks, i think so too!!!

I know it wont be a perfect test of anything but if one knife were to still be shaving sharp after processing out a whole elk and the other werent then maybe we could point more testing in a specific direction. The 3rd knife is out of the heat treat now and in the LN cryo bath, i will temper it as specified by the Uddelhom metallurgist tomorrow . anything approaching results wont be back for a couple weeks but some finished pics should roll in before to long!!
 
Ok. From what I can find, the soak time can affect grain growth. Especially, when the temp is over 2000 F. So you may be ok with the lower temp, but at 2100 F it seems important to watch the soak time.
John
 
Thanks John

Ya there were two different suggestions for soaking temp in the link you posted, i did the one that recommended a 15 min soak at 2000deg and then temper at 390 and 350. That knife is done now. The first two that i did were at 1980deg and they soaked for 45min. I guess we will just see wht we can see when I get them finished, handles are glueing up now on the first two.
 
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