sharxbyte Posted October 8, 2018 Share Posted October 8, 2018 I'm making a sushi knife for my brother. The steel is mystery, but I believe it was some sort of vintage masonry chisel (1045?) I have extra to practice heat treating on. The picture with the measure tape is the most recent. I can give more details and will update as I make progress. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Latticino Posted October 8, 2018 Share Posted October 8, 2018 Nice job drawing out the chisel. Looks like you got a lot of length out of it, but I have to be honest, it doesn't look like you have enough width to get a sushi knife out of that to me. You will have a bunch of grinding to do to get your profile refined enough, and in the shot above the measuring tape there are a ton of hammer marks to grind out (I can't tell if you forged them down in the final photo due to scale). In any case you will also have to deal with scale removal, warping during heat treatment, and potential decarb from working the billet so long. If nothing else, I would suggest you make a concerted effort to keep your forge in reduction when you go to heat treat. If it were me I'd consider making two knives out of this billet, possibly dividing them at the 9" mark. The section left with the tang would make a nice 6" kitchen knife and the remainder could be sculpted into a lovely little paring knife. 1045 may be a little low in carbon for a good sushi knife (if you chisel is indeed that low in carbon, I would expect at least 60 points). I think that more typical selections would be for a higher carbon steel that will hold an edge extremely well, but be a little less tough (1095 for example). Good luck with whatever you decide to do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sharxbyte Posted October 8, 2018 Author Share Posted October 8, 2018 Well I started removing scale and realized that this is almost certainly not 1045. It cracks like air hardening steel. so great learning experience at the expense of time and what may have been a great knife. I have a cold chisel I'll try and if that doesn't work I'll probably order a billet of the 1095 you suggest. I COULD keep working it and see if it breaks during use, or I could make it ornamental, or I can set it aside as a lesson learned. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billyO Posted October 9, 2018 Share Posted October 9, 2018 14 hours ago, sharxbyte said: I COULD keep working it and see if it breaks during use, or I could make it ornamental, or I can set it aside as a lesson learned. If you're looking for opinions, I'd keep working on it for practice in grinding, putting on the WA handle and then using it to test your heat treating. I've got a little blade that I did my first twist pattern on and didn't do a good enough job keeping the twists from giving me cold shuts. It sat on my desk for a couple of years. I decided to use it to practice my sheath making and started using it hard this past summer during my remodel, cutting everything from insulation to sheetrock, and aside from the cold shut in the blade, it's turned out to be what I consider the perfect knife for this job, and it's become my EDC knife. as always peace and love billyO Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sharxbyte Posted October 9, 2018 Author Share Posted October 9, 2018 Thanks for the input. Yesterday I set it aside and started my first stock removal from a sawblade, but I will revisit the hand forged one and see how it holds up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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