jmforge
Well-Known Member
This little 4.5 inch hunter has a very dark and highly figured Honduran rosewood burl handle, but the interestinf story is the blade steel. it is called 1.2442 in Germany and 115W8 in other parts of Europe. It is a tool steel that is no longer made commerically and was used for making metal cuitting saws. It was replaced with high speed steel because the bean counters thought that the Hs was cheaper and lasted a bit longer.......that is, when you could keep the teeth from breaking off the blades.:biggrin: Some knifemakers found a biot of it in Thailand of all places and found that it made really great knives. Achim Wirz had the steel mill that he works with smelt 4 metric tons of the stuff, so here we are. I got this piece from one of my Dutch friends. The best way that I can describe it is that it resembles higher carbon W1 with a good handful of tungsten thrown into the pot. it is some tough steel and takes a very fine edge. Achim said that 52100 is still one of his favorite slicer steels, but this stuff is better because it gets the fine edge, can get screaming hard for applications like kitchen knives and is tougher. The hardness on this knife is around 61Rc. Asking $250.
