View Single Post
  #8  
Old 11-30-2012, 11:16 AM
Zaxxon Zaxxon is offline
 
Join Date: Feb 2012
Posts: 5
Ray, thank you for the advice, point taken. I will at some point not to far in the future order some 1084. You're right about the non annealed metal. It took me hours to cut the blank with a hacksaw, and I still have not finished. I will keep working on it just to finish it by hand but not again with hand tools.

I annealed another piece of the saw in the wood stove and boy, now I get it. The hacksaw and files worked wonderfully with it. One thing that happened was that the piece of metal bowed down in the middle because I rested the two ends on logs with fire underneath. I bent it back pretty well, but the blank I ended up with is not perfectly straight. I keep fiddling with it and gently bending here and there it to try and get it in line again. I put another piece of metal in the wood stove last night this time on the floor of the stove on a level bed of ashes, surrounded on the top and sides with wood. I hope it annealed OK with most of the heat coming from the top and sides.

Now the only time I am required to hacksaw the non annealed metal is when I cut off sections of the saw blade to anneal. I can probably live with that, but I would love to figure out the scoring technique of that elder in Alaska. It would be nice to score and break the saw blade to get the sections to anneal. I am going to look for some better needle files. The ones I have were ineffective.

C Craft, thank you for all of the info, and nice looking knives. Although I am going for using all hand tools now, I think at some point I will try to make some non annealed knifes and will use the power tools. Your info will be very helpful. I love seeing what people have done with crosscut saws for knives. I love the idea of using stuff that's just lying around to make nice things.

I also have an old pedal powered grinding stone with a water trough. I got it this summer at a farm sale and tried it for the first time, just briefly, in shaping the non annealed blank and it seemed to work great. I haven't really used the stone since because I don't want to use it inappropriately. Im wondering between the stone and the files, which are better suited for what tasks. Should I be using annealed steel on the stone? Or is it better for shaping hardened steel, or just sharpening? I don't want to somehow gum up the stone if that makes any sense. It already has some streaks of something or other in a few places. Overall it seems like a great tool though, I'm very excited about it.
Reply With Quote