I'm still in the very infancy of my forging journey. I've got a million questions, but one involves the types of metals to use, and their availability. At some point I want to make a forge welded knife. I work for a hydraulic cylinder manufacturer, so I have access to scrap pieces of a variety of metals for little or no charge. To make a good knife someday, I'll need to use a combination of metals that will treat hard enough to maintain an edge. I've been reading through the many threads, and I've heard mention of using band saw blades. Is that a legitimate option? It seems to make sense, the blades need to be hard to work properly; if it's good for saw blades, then it should be good for a knife blade, right? I know we use some strong blades at work. Some of the cylinder rods are made with induction hardened chrome (by the way, would that be good material to use?), and we throw away dozens of them every day. I could have as much as I want, and without charge. That just seems too easy, or too good to be true. I'm hesitant to get too excited until I get some input from all of you.
