Deer Field Dressing Knife

[Trip59]

Just a note, not trying to take anything away from your project, but you're not going to have much luck hardening or heat treating it...

300 series stainless can only be work-hardened, same with half the 400 series, the ferritic (can't remember all the numbers off the top of my head). The Martensitic 400's can be heat treated.

That said, I've always preferred non-stainless blades, much easier to get the qualities that make a good knife out of them, and if you play the heat game right, you can get them to hold an edge for quite some time.

[Tritium]

Just a note, not trying to take anything away from your project, but you're not going to have much luck hardening or heat treating it...

300 series stainless can only be work-hardened, same with half the 400 series, the ferritic (can't remember all the numbers off the top of my head). The Martensitic 400's can be heat treated.

That said, I've always preferred non-stainless blades, much easier to get the qualities that make a good knife out of them, and if you play the heat game right, you can get them to hold an edge for quite some time.

Old car leaf springs make some wonderful knives. The material heat treats very well. So do many farm implement consumables (disk and plow points).

Thurmond

[Trip59]

I've got a handful of leaf springs and coil springs (they work if you have a forge and a good arm). One note on those, the older the better. Steel is not steel, it varies greatly over the years. The old ones are much higher quality, so much so that you can feel it in the tools as you work the pieces.

[Tritium]

I use the old car springs from model T's and up through the 1940's and old grader blades. The grader blades make wonderful hoe's and fireplace tools.

Thurmond

[jerky]

ya know, just a though on the length of this, the blade is 12" long, but once he puts a handle on it, the blade might only be 6". i think it would be a nice sized knife, just have to have a straight holder.

[MigPlazArc]

ya know, just a though on the length of this, the blade is 12" long, but once he puts a handle on it, the blade might only be 6". i think it would be a nice sized knife, just have to have a straight holder.

Yeah, It's 12" then I'm putting a 4.5" handle on it...Makes the actual blade 7.5". thought that size handle looked best on it.

And yes, I'm not going to be throwing it or anything so it doesn't need to terribly strong.

That's exactly what my late Grampa used for just about ANY homemade cutting, gardening, chipping, or chopping tools. He had a stash of leafs and plow bottoms just for it. Odd thing is that, shortly after he died, I went looking tor that stuff, and it was GONE!

Haha :'( Were did it go )': lol

[hooda]

I use the old car springs from model T's and up through the 1940's and old grader blades. The grader blades make wonderful hoe's and fireplace tools.

Thurmond

That's exactly what my late Grampa used for just about ANY homemade cutting, gardening, chipping, or chopping tools. He had a stash of leafs and plow bottoms just for it. Odd thing is that, shortly after he died, I went looking tor that stuff, and it was GONE!