Chefs knives

petie

petie

Well-Known Member
Sunday I ground out four cefs knives 2 with 5 inch blades and 2 with 9 inch blades all of themm were 2 inches wide. I'll have to say these were the toughest knives I've ground out so far. My hats off to the guys that make chefs knives. Might as well make the last ones I grind the hardest.
 
I have only done two up until the other day. They were both in O-1, and only 1.5 inches wide. I didn't think they were that bad. Just the other day though, I ground the same design in CPM 154 and I will say that sucked. It was my first experience with stainless and it didn't grind anywhere as easy as the O-1. I hope smaller knives such as hunters/skinners grind easier. What kind of steel were you using?
 
I used A-2. Maybe it was just because I've been grinding everything out of O-1 for two years. I think it might have been a combination of A-2,O-1 and a two inch wide blade. It was the first time I've ever put enough pressure on a blade to stop the belt. It didn't stall the motor but it stopped the belt cold. I'm heat treating them tommorrow so all I got left to grind is finish grinding.
 
petie said:
I used A-2. Maybe it was just because I've been grinding everything out of O-1 for two years. I think it might have been a combination of A-2,O-1 and a two inch wide blade. It was the first time I've ever put enough pressure on a blade to stop the belt. It didn't stall the motor but it stopped the belt cold.
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I've only used O-1 and 440C so far, so I'm not too familiar with grinding properties of others.
But I tend to think that irregardless of the steel used, the actual design of chefs knives tends to be somewhat more difficult to grind than other designs.

By design, we're making wide blades with narrow bevels. That's a lot of surface contact if setting the bevels in one pass.
At first, I tried to hog it all out in one setting and would stall the motor (didn't help that the motor was underpowered, either). Eventually, I went to doing more passes, starting with steeper angle to get close to center and progressively decreasing the angle on following passes to continue the bevel farther up the blade.

One would think that this is common grinding practice, but I didn't know any better. Starting with the wide, thin blades taught me real quick.

If belt is slipping without motor stalling, I always check tension, condition of belt backing, and condition of drive wheel.
 
You guys are going about it backwards! Get used to grinding CPM-154 and D2 for a while, then switch back to O1. The O1 will seem like it grinds itself :biggrin:

Seriously though, I thin everything Rob said above is true.
 
I would say Rob is exactly right. I was taking it of in several passes but I think the width of it was killing me. I think I'm gonna try a couple more out of O-1. Just to see how much difference there is in grinding that knife out of the two differnt metal alloys.
 
I have been making knives out of my O-1/L-6 damascus for quite a few years now, but I have realized that I have been spoiled. I started grinding out some kitchen knives, and because I wanted thin, I HT'd them before grinding the bevels in. 9" blades or more and 2 1/2" wide. It seemed like it took forever. I am used to ginding out bevels on hunters and such in just a few minutes, the first on of these I did took me 4 hours. I have since narrowed that down some, and I have learned that alox belts are not all that great for hogging hard steel.
 
Guys, I don't know about you, but I grind my blades hard. No bent blades! Yes its slower but you will make less mistakes grinding. At least it works for me. The only thing is grind soft are big 3V fixed blades.
 
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