Interesting piece of steel for a blade project

[thertel]

In my line of work I am able to acquire cutting blade for medium to large commercial cutters from time to time and they are usually interesting compositions.

I came across an Alliance Knife Inc. blade today which according to the website has the following composition: INLAID HIGH SPEED STEEL, which is manufactured from the traditional two-piece composite knife blanks. Our HSS inlaid knives contain 18% tungsten (SKH-2) at RC 62-63 which is designed to improve blade life. It is 18 inches long, with the thickest part of the steel being 1/4 inch and that part is about 1 inch wide and can probably be used to make 2 nice sized blades. I can provide a picture on request.

I have offered different blades up in the past and I the offer I normally make is that I will ship it to you free of charge on the condition that if you make 2 blades from the steel you ship one of those to me.

Let me know.

Thomas

 

[7X57chilmau]

Heh! I've got a pair of industrial planer knives, each about 18" x 3/4" thick X 6" deep... Damned if'n I know how I'm gonna break that down to a size I can forge.....

J

 

[thertel]

One of the more interesting pieces I've come across was at a newspaper facility. The blade was about 4 feet long 3/4 inch thick and about 10 inches deep. The knife I have from that block is wicked sharp.

I normally offer to run it through a chop saw into smaller pieces for ease of use.

Thomas

 

[TMM]

if you're looking to sell the steel, i'd suggest going to the selling section of this forum, or perhaps mosey on down to knifeforums.com or somesuch...

TMM

 

[JTW Jr.]

D2 is commonly used for planer blades.

 

[7X57chilmau]

It wouldn't surprise me if these blades are D2. Clearly, looking at them, the steel is semi-stainless (only a few rust spots after 3 years in my shed), and very difficult to machine. There are bolt holes in the back of the blades, and they were roughly threaded by grinding before being heli-coiled, which would be consistant with D2's machineablility, I think....

Probably worth a small fortune, being about 30# each....

They'll rest there until the RIGHT project comes along...

J

 

[Zeke/PA]

In a heat treated state ANY tool steel is difficult to work because of it's hardness.
Steel heat treated to the upper range of the Rockwell Scale must be either ground or machined with Carbide tooling. even then you will expirience difficulty.
D-2, a War I era die steel, because of it's high abrasian resistance is a harder than normal grind as you Toolmakers/ Machinists already know.
For my money, if I wanted to make a knife, I would start out with flat ground stock of a known alloy.
Planer blades?
Where would you begin?
Clearly an annealing operation is in order.

 

[JTW Jr.]

If you have a belt grinder with power and coarse belts , grinding hardened steel is not an issue , 60 grit blaze orange belts eat steel like cereal , without a good grinder , working hardened steel would be a royal pain.

I ground a bunch of blades after HT , didn't notice much of a difference with the Bader , but by hand , forget it.

 

[Dustin19]

i always been interested in making knives let me know how it turns out if thats what ur gonna do