want to make a kitchen knife; could use a little advice

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zhyla

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I wanted to pick up a short project since my last one ran just shy of a year long. I've been wanting to make a knife for a while. In particular, I want to make a kitchen knife because the only fixed blades I use are in the kitchen. And I want a carbon steel kitchen knife.

Wait... this is a weapon forum. Crap. Ok, so this will be my go-to SHTF knife while I'm in the kitchen, ok? :)

Here's what I'm thinking:

Santoku style (including the chisel grind)
1095 steel since it's common and easy to heat treat
1/16" thick

My main question is whether 1/16" steel is going to be thick enough? I've looked at specs for a number of santokus and .08" seems to be fairly common.

I'm open to other blade styles suggestions, my wife uses a santoku-ish Kyocera ceramic knife almost exclusively and this would hopefully meet the same needs. I'm mainly interested in it cuttting vegetables.

Thanks for the input.
 
Just a few things off the top of my head.

Kitchen knives tend to be thinner since they are used for slicing rather than chopping. I think people are too obsessed with thicker knives being better. They tend to stick and drag so they slice much less efficiently.

If you are doing the heat treat yourself long blades may warp on you during the process. This is a pain to fix.

Kitchen knives have a lot of blade edge for their size. Grinding the edge and sharpening will take a long time, even with a belt grinder.

I don't like chisel grind knives. I understand the idea but don't like how they won't slice either way. Personally a good, thin, blade with something like a 30 degree inclusive edge with a medium polished edge will do everything just as well.

Also have you thought about how to make the handle? Will it be full tang? Are the scales hand carved? Will they be pinned in place? Do you have a drill press that can handle high carbon steel?

Not trying to be mean, just make sure you don't jump in over your head.

This is some great reading
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/452465-***Newbies-Good-info-Here***

http://www.knivesby.com/knifemaking.html
 
I don't take that as mean, I take that as helpful.

I'm not married to the chisel grind, it just seemed easiest. What I read said you can form the grind with a file. I get what you mean, 8" of blade is a lot of filing, though if the steel is 1/16" thin there's much less material to remove. That may be naive thinking on my part, I mainly work with wood and plastic.

I'm a little bit into woodworking, plenty of interesting wood out in the garage. So that should be the easier part. One page I read said knife handles need to be "stabilized" by soaking them in some magic liquid. I've never heard of such a thing and kind of wonder whether that's needed for all woods?

I was intending full tang with scales on either side. Pins seem to be the way people do this but I haven't investigated that much.

I have a drill press. I haven't drilled any steel with it but I suspect 1/16" steel will be no problem. If I'm wrong then I'm boned since I was planning on drilling holes to establish the rough outline, then hacksawing along the perforation line.

Thanks for the link, will need to poke around there.
 
Zhyla,

Vacuum jar + polyurethane&linseed oil mixture = "magic".

But, no. If you select a wood that has natural resistance to moisture there is no need to stabilize.

When it comes to the stabilization process, I am a skeptic. There are wooden structures that have lasted virtually unchanged for 900 + years (stave churches, for example). Is that enough? How will plastic do in comparison?
 
Look at some older "Old Hickory" knives. But my favorite knife is a Cattaragus french knife.
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Or thinned slow set "super glue" and a vacuum chamber. ;)

Thick is good in kitchen cleavers, bad in knives.

Ask your wife if she uses 8" or not or just 6" and adjust your project accordingly.

Remember you want to polish the knife very very well.
 
So, having read some big threads on quenching and heat treating, I'm a little more concerned about this. The previous reading I'd done essentially amounted to "heat blade with blowtorch until red hot, quench in peanut oil, then later bake at 400 F." That sounds like something I can do.

But after reading a bit on the bladeforum link it seems like the experts think 1095 is more finicky than that. In particular they say you want to get it to exactly 1475 F which I have no easy way of controlling. Thoughts?

Do I need to heat/quench the entire piece (including tang) or just the blade portion?
 
heat blade with blowtorch until red hot
Click to expand...

The hard part to learn is to heat it evenly with a torch , which is very hard to do , and I doubt even those that have been doing it for years are getting the most out of the steel with that method. Even heat treat is the key , especially to avoid warpage.

Peanut oil works , but something like Parks50 is better.
 
1/16" thick
Click to expand...
First off, I'll throw in my opinion as an amateur maker. 1/16" steel is BLOODY hard to grind evenly into any taper, let alone a double taper. You're talking about taking away a taper from 0" to 1/32" (0.00625") off each side. No room for error at all. Plus, 1/16" steel is going to be very flexible, which is ok for a fillet blade, but hard to even sharpen because it will squirm away from the stone, let alone file or grind on, evenly.

Even 1/8" stuff is tricky.

As for 1095 heat treating, I've done several and they all seem to have worked well. 1080 appears to be popular as it is a bit more forgiving. 5160 is even more so.

I can't see heat treating a large blade with a torch. And a common blow-torch is going to be tought to use to get the whole blade to temp. anyway. I use a coal forge I built, but a propane kiln would be easier. Either one is going to invite warpage, especially of steel that thin.

You can always send it out to Lee Oates or someone like that to do the heat-treating for you for very little money, and a guaranteed result. There's enough tricky skill sets involved in making a knife that you shouldn't feel you have to tackle every one of them at the same time.
 
My favorite Chef's knife is from Wusthoff. 18cm would be the minimum thickness for me. 22cm should be near perfect.
 
zhyla,

What ever you do, don't get the metal too hot, at any stage - especially when you harden the blade. Steel has a "memory", of sorts, when it comes to abuse. So, try to keep the temperature at the lower end of the scale, at all times. And remember that if you are using artificial light in your shop there is a BIG chance that you will misinterpret the heat colors of the metal. For example, non-alloyed carbon steels are almost "black" when in the non-magnetic-ready-to-quench-temperature in what you might call "normal" lighting in a workshop. That means your "1475 F", or almost bright red, is going to be pretty much dull red.

Turn the lights off when you harden (edit: and block out bright sunlight). Get a magnet. Build a simple coal burning...whatever... and bellows....

Good luck!
 
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Sam, thanks for the detailed warnings. Outsourcing the heat treatment sounds like a good plan. I like doing everything myself but if I can't do it with a torch I think it's wise to tap out on this part.

So, 1/16" I think I could use a cheap knife sharpener to set the initial grind, though a chisel grind I think would be easy enough. Maybe I'm just naive, but I've put a lot of very fine edges on things like hand planes, this isn't a big concern for me.

Warpage and flexibility are concerns, of course. Is .09" a better choice? I want something that has the minimum thickness but still stiff enough not to flex much when working on tough veggies. 1/8" seems thicker than I want, and thicker than most santokus. Assuming I send it off to Lee Oates for heat treatment and I have magic bevelling abilities, can I get away with something this thin?
 
Honestly, I don't know how to answer your questions precisely as I don't have the experience. I'm just sharing warnings from my own observations.

I certainly have sharpened a monstrous pile of plane blades myself, and if you're going with a fairly steep chisel grind, that analogy may be applicable.

I was thinking more of a full-flat grind (continuous flat plane from edge to spine, not counting a micro-bevel), than a true chisel grind which may stop only 1/2" up from the edge. (Hence my observation on "Zero to 1/32" before.)
 
Hey, I was thinking, if I'm going to outsource the heat treatment anyways, is there a better choice of steel than 1095? Not that there's anything wrong with 1095, just I was limiting my steel choice to things I could manage easily at home.
 
As a kitchen knife you might appreciate the benefits of any of the super stainless alloys, (440C, 154CM, ATS-34, etc.) but that pushes your costs up.
 
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