Stainless Steel for Beginning Knife Makers

Walter Sorrells answers viewer questions on Knife Maker's Friday Five #61. Questions include good stainless steels for knife making beginners, whether Walter still uses the same forge he started his career with, and whether Tormach CNC machines can be used to mill cutlery steels.

FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL:
Instagram: walterstactix
Twitter: @WalterSorrells

WANT TO BUY ONE OF MY BLADES?

[gstanley]

Comments on types of steel remind me of the saying, “beware the man, who uses inly one gun, he probably knows it well.” Robert Loveless, thought not exclusively, used ATS-34 for much of his knife making career.

[garetkonigsfeld]

I still love 440c it's my go-to steel. Really enjoy your videos. Thanks for sharing your info even after 20 years of making knives. You still have information I find very useful.

[scottpetrie]

I tried to reach through the phone to adjust your mic but no luck. Great content my friend.

[briandalbey]

i use a cricut with vinyl stencil to acid etch my logo. another very versatile way to do work
.

[endurogubbarna]

A good "starting" steel is AEB-L. You are actually able to forge is as carbon steels has good properties and forgiving for beeing a stainless. I actually tested to heat treat it in my forge and used a laser thermometer to see it got to the correct temperature. But still, I would recommend you a heat treating oven. The second one I tested failed...

[ASimao]

The real conundrum is.... Four years ago, in Indonesia, I saw with my own eyes, a "traditional" blacksmith, working with minimal tools (essencialy angle grinders) and heating in a charcoal forge, making knives out of K110 tool steel... Not knowing what steel it was, the son's smith, who spoke some english, showed the invoice in which k110 is listed the same as aisi D2 so, the old man was producing some realy good blades (tested in my presence) forging and heat treating them in an open forge... So much for the electric ovens and foil raps...

[xthemadplumberx]

First and only stainless I’ve used was 440c. I’ve just finished a chopper where I got very tired of hand sanding so I just stopped and put a handle on it. It was the best decision I’ve ever made; I’m not scared to messed it up because it wasn’t totally finished. I haven’t been able to dull the edge yet and I’ve tried very hard. 440c can be oil quenched and you can heat treat it with out an oven, but with a PID controlled forge. Watch my poorly made video if you don’t think it true.

[dogsoupblues]

I built my own heat treat oven from scratch, and it was incredibly easy 🙂 Cost of all parts was maybe $250, and it works quite well. Couldn't justify the cost of an Evenheat or equivalent

[rileyevans]

Could you do a video on how you’re killing your blades. Do you hard mill? I saw them on the side of the pallet. Did you machine an angle on the side of the pallet so the machine just has to run along the bevel and you don’t have to worry about steps in the bevel?

Also how well does it do for handles? Or more specifically how does it work and or how do you chamfer the edges of the handles? Right now I use a router with a half round bit.

Thank you

Riley

[philochristos]

The first stainless steel I used was CPM-S35VN, and I still use it. It's the perfect balance of everything I want, including price and ease of heat treating. I have also used a lot of M390 because a very generous supporter bought me two huge sheets of it. I hate working with M390, but it makes a great hunting knife because it'll hold an edge so well. It is not great for bigger knives, including choppers and chef knives, because it's too brittle, and playing with the heat treat doesn't seem to improve that too much. M390 is actually easier to heat treat than CPM-S35VN because you don't have to get it as cold when you cryo-quench it. You can do it with dry ice and acetone.

[lancelandis]

I've sent my stainless steel blades out to get them heat treated if it is a steel that takes a real high temperature to get them hardened.

[gabrielbibliotecaj]

HI, tjanks for the video. One question. You said that 440 steel is acceptable, but what do you think of 420? Is it as bad as people say for knives?

[JohannSwart_JWS]

Not a fan of laser engraved logo's. The hallmark of quality Japanese kitchen knives is a hand engraved signature. The laser stuff is just the opposite, in my humble opinion. Surely you don't make THAT many knives. If you do, kudo's, no complaints.

[thomasblair]

After Hamon has been completed how many grits are used to hand sand before etching?

[mikeredrugger]

Have you ever made a belt grinder if so any plans available

[xthemadplumberx]

And another thing to think about is hand sanding. The big thing on YouTube is hand sanding is the bomb and that’s how you really get a knife finished correctly. Stainless Steel really sucks to hand sand, it’s horrible. It took all the fun away for me and I was very discouraged about making anything in general after messing around with stainless. I had the most fun before I knew that ppl looked down at knives if they weren’t hand sanded. I’ve went back to the drawing board though and I bought every grit of Trizac belt and a fine grit scotch bright belt, because I’m not hand sanding my next stainless knife; it has beat me. I am done.

[krissteel]

Wouldn't say I[m any kind of authority on stainless, but I've made and sold a lot of the little bastards and I think the first step new makers have to get their mind around is that these are a series of metals made in the industrial age for industrial processes. Which has some good and bad parts to it-
Plenty of accurate documentation
High standards of metal production
Good for mass production
Where its not so great though for the hobby knife maker is making maybe 1-2 knives at a time because you're looking at some factors like using an oxygen free environment (gas injection or foil packet) which means more stuff to buy and having gear which can sit on a much higher temperature (than carbon steels) for the austenise-martensite magic to work properly and they will usually need some kind of soak time of anywhere between 5-30min at that exact temp before you quench. Which is normally actually easier and less hassle than oil quenching, either by hanging in still air or doing a plate quench. Nothing catches on fire, you aren't slopping crap everywhere and its generally really easy as you've usually got about 1-2min to get it down to under about 3-400C and you'll have a hard knife. Same with tempering, if you can temper a carbon steel in that 150-230C bracket that opens up most stainless types, a few will temper around the 500C mark so keep that in mind going through your data sheets.
Data sheets- do what it says, don't do anything else but exactly what the manufacturer says! Or just do what you want and have no good knives, choice is yours
In regards to sub zero treatments, no all stainless steels need it, read the data sheet, it might not need it at all and your purpose might not require it either as some steel just don't.

Starting off-
AEBL and most of the Sandvik derivatives and the UK SF100 are sort of close family of steels, easy to work with, finish nicely, take an extremely fine edge and they're tougher than a $2 steak. Not great for edge holding compared to some steels, but its really not terrible for a lot of occasional use along with good corrosion resistance and ease of sharpening
Budget bangers-
N690 and VG10, big plates of this stuff can be pricey but will also make a lot of knives, they're sort of a derivative of the 440 series of steels and don't need sub-zero processing (well you can but it does nothing!) and take a fine edge, good retention and edge stability at the higher hardness with bomb proof levels of corrosion resistance
Better bangers
CPM S30V, S35VN and S45VN make excellent knives that will out-perform pretty much most kitchen knives and really have a lot to like about them, they finish 'ok' but are a bit of a chore once you're hand sanding, oh so much hand sanding. You do like hand sanding don't you? Good corrosion resistance, harder to sharpen for non-knife dorks and not necessarily very tough so don't make an axe out of it or go out of your way to fight a bear with one.

Those are just some I have a good working experience with, they're good steels and there's plenty more good steels out there for you to look at as well. Mostly it comes down to, can I make it as good as it needs to be with the gear you got, not the gear you might want.

[lessparks]

When grinding the initial bevels on the blades, how thin do you take the knife edge? Should they be almost sharp before heat treating or do you leave a few thousands of fat? Thanks. I always learn something from your videos.

[Jiminycroquet]

Audio is a bit off in this video walter, I had my volume all the way up and can barely hear you. Other youtube videos are much louder.

[erikcourtney]

With these cheap high power lasers it’s even easier for people to make fake Damascus knifes. Remember if it’s cheap, then it’s either fake, bad steel, or poor construction.