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Old 10-21-2017, 06:17 AM
Doug Lester Doug Lester is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Decatur, IL
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It would help if we knew where you were writing from so that we knew what your local limitations, or steel codes are. I have no idea what that first steel is like so I can't really say about it. 1095 is not really a beginner's steel. It can be a little tricky to heat treat.

Try to find a steel that has about 0.80% carbon in it along with some manganese and maybe just a touch or chromium and maybe some vanadium. Here in the US that would be 80CrV2. It doesn't need a long soak to get the carbon into solution. The chromium will give a little depth of hardening and the vanadium will put a drag on the grain growth so over heating will not be quite as much of a problem. The ~0.80% carbon content will give just about full solution of carbon in the iron without having so much that you will form retained austenite as with higher carbon steels, such as the 1095.

As far as the handle material goes I would forget about bone or antler scales if you are intending to baton the blade through wood. Wood would be a better choice as it's less likely to break. I would favor something dense and maybe even oily. Dense and oily would be the rosewood family. The would be things like coco bolo, kingwood, African blackwood, and, of course, the various species known as rosewood. The down side is that the rosewood family is coming under harvesting and shipping restrictions. Lignum vitae is also a dense oily wood. It's so dense that it' won't float in water. The New World variety is under restrictions but the Old World genus is not restricted. You could also try Desert Ironwood or Osage Orange, either the North American or South American varieties. Also, don't overlook the synthetics such as Micarta or G-10.

As far as the design goes, it looks pretty good. A couple of suggestions would be to drop the saber grind and take the primary bevel up the the spine of the blade. I think that you would find that the full flat grind will slice better. If you want a little more strength behind the edge for chopping duties you cold give the secondary bevel a convex contour by grinding it on a slack belt. Also do away with the fuller. They really serve no purpose on a knife that size.

As far as the handle design goes goes I would do away with the finger notches. If you are worrying about your hand slipping up onto the blade while you are using it try installing a single guard on the knife. It's not that hard of a job and will stop your hand a lot better than the notches. Also if you shape your handle with a palm swell in the middle it will be a lot more comfortable than flat scales.

Doug


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