Steel type & Books/Videos

W

Woodmeister

Member
Hi. A couple more newbie questions:
1. What are some good steel types to start with for learning grinding?
2. Are there any charts or rules of thumb for what speed to grind at in relation to the belt coarseness or type of metal?
3. Can anyone recommend some books or dvds that cover grinding techniques for flat platen and convex grinding? I've watched some you tube tutorials but there's a lot of book/dvd material out there and I can't tell what's worth the $.
Thanks. -Todd
 
Plain steel such as 1080, 1084, or even 1095 would be good. Sometimes there are heat treating issues with 1095, but it can be done. Some of the simpler tool and spring steels like W1, W2, 5160, and 9260, if you can find it, are real good too. All are easy to heat treat yourself and a pretty inexpensive. The more complex tool steels and stainless steels really need a regulated oven to austinize in. For some you will need two because they will need to be tempered at temperatures that the kitchen oven can't reach.

Generally the courser the belt the faster you can run your grinder and the finer, the slower you will have to go. But there are other things that figure into it also, such as pressure on the belt, the steel alloy, and even the size of the blade. Experience level and what you feel comfortable with are also biggies. There's no one set of speeds for any given type of belt.

Can't help you on the third a whole lot because I'm a smith. I'll leave that question to the grinders.

Doug
 
Thanks for the info, Doug. Very helpful. I think I will be using my local knife store for heat treating, so I won't worry about that for now, other than knowing what to tell them for the oven.
I do like the idea of stainless steel. What about 440C stainless and CPMS 30V? Can they be done close to a mirror finish? Chime in all you grinders!
I'm considering dvds by Harvey Dean on flat grinding and Johnny Stout on hollow grinding. Can anybody tell me how good those two are? -Todd
 
Blade shop has some very good book discounts and some on dvds running right now.
That is the book sale side of Blade Magazine/
 
Woodmeister said:
Thanks for the info, Doug. Very helpful. I think I will be using my local knife store for heat treating, so I won't worry about that for now, other than knowing what to tell them for the oven.
I do like the idea of stainless steel. What about 440C stainless and CPMS 30V? Can they be done close to a mirror finish? Chime in all you grinders!
I'm considering dvds by Harvey Dean on flat grinding and Johnny Stout on hollow grinding. Can anybody tell me how good those two are? -Todd
Click to expand...

440C is a good choice - easy to work, finishes well and reasonably priced. It is easy to sharpen and will hold an edge not too bad. S30V is almost the other end of the spectrum. It is wear resistant, so will hold an edge for a long time, but it's much harder to work and darn near impossible to mirror finish. You might want to consider 154M which is only a small step up in price from 440C, but a big step up in performance and in my opinion, just as easy to work and finish.
 
Thanks. I think I'll get a piece of 440C stainless and a couple pieces of CPM154 stainless.

Mike, I found one of the dvds on sale at shopblade but the shipping made it worse overall. -Todd
 
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