One of the things I figured out early on is that it takes just about the same amount of electricity (or charcoal) to heat treat one blade as it does to heat treat half a dozen. Ever since then, I've always built in batches of the same kind of steel. I've got a show coming up and am working on a batch of blades. Here are the blades I'll document for the WIP, plus a few completed knives that will go to the show as well.
There they are all profiled. The row on the right is CM154 and the row on the left is D2. The finished blades are all 1084. I want to point out several things. One, all of these are simliar, but slightly different. Although these are mostly my standard patterns, every one is done by eye. Two, notice the sharpie. I lay out the design, bolsters, etc. with a sharpie before I start grinding. It's all by eye after that. Three, even though I said "batches of the same kind of steel" I am doing D2 and CM154. I'll run the D2 blades at 1850 then bump the oven up to 1950 for the CM154.
My oven is a dental burnout oven, 220 volt. It takes forever to get to temp and the readout is in Celsius. You'll see my F/C chart on the wall behind. The good parts, it will hold a 13" blade and is programmable for hold times, intermediate holds, etc. The bad parts, it's slow.
Here they are all beveled and ready for heat treat. The D2 blades are in the oven. I grind them all to 160 grit prior to heat treat. You'll notice some standard knifemaking stuff here: the tapered tangs all have holes drilled. I didn't take pictures of the drilling, but all those 1/4" holes were done with an old bit. Key was slow speed and high feed rate. Another standard knifemaker trick: don't forget to drill all your holes before heat treat. I drilled exactly 100 holes in this batch of 13 blades. As I got further along, I realized that one of the blades had the bolster holes drilled wrong. I had to change the design slightly and drill a couple more holes. Catching that saved me a scrap blade.
There they are all profiled. The row on the right is CM154 and the row on the left is D2. The finished blades are all 1084. I want to point out several things. One, all of these are simliar, but slightly different. Although these are mostly my standard patterns, every one is done by eye. Two, notice the sharpie. I lay out the design, bolsters, etc. with a sharpie before I start grinding. It's all by eye after that. Three, even though I said "batches of the same kind of steel" I am doing D2 and CM154. I'll run the D2 blades at 1850 then bump the oven up to 1950 for the CM154.
My oven is a dental burnout oven, 220 volt. It takes forever to get to temp and the readout is in Celsius. You'll see my F/C chart on the wall behind. The good parts, it will hold a 13" blade and is programmable for hold times, intermediate holds, etc. The bad parts, it's slow.
Here they are all beveled and ready for heat treat. The D2 blades are in the oven. I grind them all to 160 grit prior to heat treat. You'll notice some standard knifemaking stuff here: the tapered tangs all have holes drilled. I didn't take pictures of the drilling, but all those 1/4" holes were done with an old bit. Key was slow speed and high feed rate. Another standard knifemaker trick: don't forget to drill all your holes before heat treat. I drilled exactly 100 holes in this batch of 13 blades. As I got further along, I realized that one of the blades had the bolster holes drilled wrong. I had to change the design slightly and drill a couple more holes. Catching that saved me a scrap blade.