Kevin Cashen's video on 1080 &1084

T

Tom Lewis

Well-Known Member
I just watched Kevin's video and it is excellent. Very well done, with lots of great information.
Kevin, I have a question. If a person does stock removal, would Normalizing, annealing, stress relieving etc. be necessary? How would it work if a stock removal blade of 1084 went straight to hardening and tempering and skipped all the other steps?
 
Just a tidbit..... when we buy steel that is listed as "annealed", it is generally spherodized annealed. In a nutshell, that means it's half way annealed. It's a quick, down and dirty method used by steel producers, and is not the same as what most knifemaker would call annealed. Generally spherodized annealed material has an annealed "skin", but several thousandths beneath the surface, the material is often still hard.

Although I've not watched Kevin's video, I can promise you that there are few who possess his level of knowledge when it comes to metallurgy.... and whether stock removal or forged, you'd be wise to follow his advice.
 
Hello Tom, I won’t go into detail on the annealed conditions as you no doubt have seen that I devoted a significant chapter to go quite in-depth on the video where I let the steel itself do the explaining with the micrographs, rather than my boring blabbering. This sort of Q&A does, however, help me improve my explanations on future releases.

With 1080 and 1084 the extensive spheroidizing should be more than uniform and should not require any corrections in that area so one could skip normalization and move onto the subsequent refining heats to better prepare it for the following teat treatments. The spheroidal carbide of 10XX steel is merely iron-carbide (cementite), which dissolves very easily, but some of the next DVD’s coming out will cover what happens with higher order carbides (Cr, V, W ) and how they need some extra attention, often even right out of the box. Spheroidizing is a very thorough annealing process and, as shown on the DVD, often a little too thorough.
 
So is there a link to the vodeo Kevin for those of us who havent seen it and are always loking to increase our knowledge to make better knives
 
Currently the Video is only on DVD, which I have for sale at my website. I wont' get too pushy with the salesmanship as that just sort of goes against my grain on these forums, but if anybody wants to visit my website they can find it. I have the framework in place for digitally downloadable content but I still need to get some other things in order.
 
Von, Ed, and Kevin thanks for the help and answers.
Kevin, on your next video you might consider a section on heat treat for stock removal blades. I m 70 years old, my shoulder is injured, and I find myself making more and more stock removal knives.
 
Actually, I was careful to include every possible heat treating operation for both stock removal and forging, I really can't think of what to add for stock removal rather than cutting from the forging. The stock remover merely needs to omit the forging and any of the treatments necessitated by forging (i.e. normalizing and annealing). In each section directions are given for both heating with a forge and with a digitally controlled oven. I also considered all of my non-U.S. friends and made sure every temperature was given in both Fahrenheit and Celsius.
 
I will second the quality of this video. Picked one up at the Blade Show and it is excellent. It should be required viewing for anyone wanting to make knives with 1080 or 1084. I am looking forward to the future DVD's coming out on other alloys.
 
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