Steel??

cnilson

Active Member
What is the the best steel to work with for a newbie?? That is for easy grinding. Will send out for heat treat.
 
Try 1084. Either from Aldo or Tracey at USA knifemakers. Its easy stuff to work with IMHO. Also Its real easy to heat treat yourself.

Bennie
 
If you send it out, either A2, or 01. Both come as spheroidized anealled. Dead soft. You can cut slivers from either with a pocket knife. Both have a vast range of sizes to choose from, with 01 having the most.
 
If you are going to do stock removal and send the blades out for heat treatment you might want to consider sticking with air quenching steels like A2 or D2. A lot of the professional heat treaters only do air quenching steels, though if you look hard enough you may find someone who will handle oil quenching steels.

Doug Lester
 
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If you are sending it out you can start with just about any steel you want. There's not gonna be a whole lot of noticable difference for someone just starting between any of the common steels, as long as they're annealed. Probably want to avoid the "super steels", though ( those with high vanadium content, to be more precise). I think Peter's will heat treat air hardening and oil hardening steels. O-1 makes about as good of a blade as you can ask for if stain resistence isn't an issue.
 
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O1 for a carbon steel, and if you want a stainless steel 440C is good. You can buy both at texasknife.com (Texas Knifemakers Supply) and they will heat treat your 440C blade for you, but not the O1.
 
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