Fredeen Blades

I was just wondering if you have ever used a tool steel like O-1 in any of your knives? Just curious BTW I recently started making my first knife that isnt mild steel, right now it is just a blank but i'm going to wait until I get some more practice with my belt grinder before I continue. It's going to be a, I guess you could say modern survival knife. The blade material is O-1 tool steel and the scales for the handle are neoprene.

Yep, O-1 is a great blade steel. Some of the other tool steels are not as great for blades/bladesmithing in my opinion. Your "A" series is air hardening which means no forging, things like the "M" series steels are not forge friendly, and HT is near impossible without very specialized equipment. I'm not a fan of blade steels that I can't HT myself, and blade steels that can't be forged (or at least forged relatively easily). A lot of people started using these other tool steels for knives either by following suit of facory production knives, or in the search for that "magic" steel that will make their knives somehow "better" than everyone elses (to which I say its not the steel that will necessarily make the knife better, but rather the skill of the maker and the understanding of how to HT the steel for the performance characteristics of that specific blade).

Anyway, sorry for that little tangent, back to O-1. Its a great steel, hardens very nicely, and will hold an edge very well (if HT'ed properly of course). Forges without too much of a hitch, and is realtively forgiving with HT. To get the maximum performance out of the steel it does like a preheat soak to 1200 F, and then a quench temp of about 1475. The more control you have with the temperatures and times with HT, the happier it will be, so to speak, and you can get a little better performance from it, but if you don't have that kind of control to be able to soak at 1200 F, or hold 1475 exactly, it is forgiving and HT is definately doable by someone without a digitally controlled HT furnace/oven. As long as you are in the ball park of say 1450 F to 1500 F you shouldnt have any problems hardening it, just try not to overheat the steel, use a magnet and that should get you pretty close. You'll also have to temper a little higher with the O-1, just because of the extra hardness it gets, its not uncommon to have to go up to 475 F to get to about 60 HRC, an edge flex test on a brass rod will tell you if you need to temper more (you could start at 425-450, and step it up in 10 degree incriments as needed until the edge won't chip any more).

Hope you plan to post some pictures when you get it done or even as you make progress with it.

Graham

Sure I'll post some in progress pictures, if not today then tomorrow.