My First 52100 steel knife

Lerch

Lerch

Well-Known Member
Just got this one finished today. I actually made this knife and another one at the same time but i decided to try a different heat treat on this one so i took me a hair longer to get it finished. The first knife of this 52100 batch i made was a single quench blade that i normalized and heat treated using some info i got from Kevin Cashen. I tested this first knife with a rope cut test and got 38 cuts before i felt i felt a measurable change in how difficult it was to cut. I was pretty satisfied with this and i am currently using this knife as my hunting knife since i was not thrilled with how the handles turned out, i did give the knife a good workout on a 148" 9point whitetail last thursday :)

The second blade i decided to heat treat according to the "Ed Fowler" recipe or by my interpretation of it. I normalized the blade in the same process as my first 52100 blade, three normalizing temps starting at 1675deg and air cool, 1550 and air cool and then 1475 and air cool. I then heat treated the blade with a 5 min soak at 1490deg and then edge quenched in heated canola oil. The blade then rested overnight in my freezer and i repeated the heat treating process 2 more times over the next 2 days for a total of 3 quenches. After the last quench i cleaned the blade once it was hand cool and gave it a 10hr LN Cryo bath. After the LN bath i warmed the blade up slowly by wrapping it in insulation and leaving it to rest for the day. I then tempered the blade twice at i believe 350deg, i cant find my notes on that. Well after finishing the blade and handles and sharpening it i gave this triple quenched blade the same rope cut test today and i was impressed with the results. The new blade seemed to lose its shaving edge at about 55 cuts and was still cutting very well at 75 cuts when i stopped. Now these were my first two cut tests so i am sure i was doing more than a few things wrong but either way it seemed to me that the triple quenched blade did hold a edge noticeably longer than the single quenched blade.

So anyway here is my first Triple Quenched 52100 Huntsman Knife.

Specs are :

Triple quenched 52100 steel LN Cryo treated and double tempered
Copper Bolsters
Sheep horn spacer
Black Poison Wood Burl (Chechen Burl) handles with 1/8" mosaic pins

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Sorry for the Iphone pics, my good camera bit the dust. I couldnt get a pic where the wood really showed the burl well, i will try to get another one tomorrow but trust me it is some very nice looking wood. This knife is gonna be a gift to a buddy of mine who a year and a half ago first showed me how to make knives. He is a massive Ed Fowler fan and turned me on to Ed Fowlers work that has influenced me so much. That is the reason why i went with this HT recipe.

Well let me know what ya think, i only have the knife for one more day and then it is off to hunt some mule deer!!

THanks
steve
 
Nice looking blade! Did I miss how thick the blade was? Congrats on the buck also. 148 inches of bone is nothing to sneeze at!
 
Interesting information, and nice looking knives. The results of your testing seem impressive.
 
Thank yall,

Ya so far i am more happy with this one than with any knife i have made so far. The blade is 5/32" thick stock, sorry i forgot to mention that
 
I thought this pic showed the wood and hamons better
 

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Thanks

I was cutting 1" poly braid rope, i couldnt find any hemp rope like i always see in the write ups on rope cut tests
 
Sounds like it was cutting pretty darn good.

Most of the big box home improvement stores have hemp rope they sell by the foot. That is probably what you see most of the time in the write ups. I usually get 3/4" or 5/8" depending upon which one they have in stock. Hemp rope is very difficult to cut so that is what I use. It doesn't really matter so much the type of rope IMHO it is a guide to go by. I buy a pretty good length each time so I am testing each blade on the same batch of rope which gives me a base line to test by. I just want to get all my blades to cut consistently. I am getting there, but have a bit to go yet.
 
You have some good ideas in your design. I am very pleased you are actually testing for knife performance. Thanks, there is a lot to it, but it is good times.
 
Wow so it this The Ed Fowler ??

A buddy of mine, Brent Peck, is supposed to be on his way up to see ya, he is going mule deer huntin around Thermopolis, WY in the next day or so and I recently helped him purchase one of your knives. We found a Pronghorn yearling for sale on Ebay and him and me both being fans of your work looked the knife up and down and figured it was authentic so he bought it. I guess he emailed you sometime after that and you talked with him about the knife and told him to stop by when he came up hunting. I dont know if he made it up to ya yet, he was going pheasant hunting in south dakota first i think. He should have his Fowler knife and the one i made him with him when he comes by, unless he lost em already haha.

thank ya sir, I really enjoy your work and designs and cant wait to own one myself some day. i sure am enjoying working with 52100 so far !!

thanks
steve
 
I look forward to his visit. Please ask him to call the day before and not to depend on the answering machine to get the message to. I will set him up with a couple of DVD's to go along with his knew knife.
 
Great,

Ya i think you told him to give you a call the day before to check in with ya. I know he is lookin forward to meeting ya .
 
I wanted to just clarify a thing on two on this post. When i made this post I was simply trying to show my progress with 52100 steel. Kevin Cashen was nice enough to help me out with some info on the normalization process for this particular steel and that info has worked great for me.

My heat treat recipe for the first knife was info i gathered from a few sources in reading and if i remember right some info from Ed Cafferey who has also been kind enough to help me.

The triple quench heat treat was from my interpretation of what i have read about Ed Fowlers process and me applying the normalization process and heat treat temps i had previously learned

I was not trying to pit any particular process or recipe against another, my only intention was to show my progress so far with the steel and the luck i had with the triple quench.

Again i am not trying to say anyones recipe or process works better than anyone elses, instead i was trying to show the luck i had using info i had gathered from a few different sources.

thanks
steve
 
Lerch, I have really enjoyed your posts on 52100 and certainly don't think you are saying one is better. You are getting infomation and trying it out and testing the results. I think that is what it is all about IMHO. I will say again Thank You to all the more experience folks for sharing your information, it was probably very hard earned.

Keep up the great work and good looking knife.
 
Thank ya sir

Some times what i am thinking and what comes out in typed words aint the same thing and also it is very easy for internet posting to get taken the wrong way, so i just wanted to clarify all that.

All the info I received worked great for me and i cant wait to use it all again!
 
The proof is in the pudding as they say, and you are PROVING your knives abilities.

I asked a knifemaker who was set up at our local craft fair after listening to him tell a potential customer some of the "Magical" processes he used in making his knives. When no one else was around, I asked him how he tested his knives. He gave me the same schpiel he had just gave the other guy. I asked again, how do you know what your blades will do if you dont test them, mentioning rope cuts, edge defection on a brass rod, chopping, and testing to destruction. He looked at me like I had said I drown kittens for fun! Why would I ruin a good knife by breaking it? Some folks dont "Get It" when it comes to what a knife should be able to do.

Im glad you are using a scientific approach, and taking notes. The advise of folks like you mentioned is a HUGE start! I have just started to forge again after many years of being away from it. My notes on 5160 were a great help. Funny how we tend to forget things!

Great looking knife, and really nice to know what it's capeable of!

God Bless
Mike
 
Thank ya sir, i appreciate your comments

Everyone on there has always been nice to enough to lend advice and experince when asked and i love getting to try it all out first hand. Like everyone else i wish i had more time to try different combinations and methods and see what lends the best results but most of that will have to wait until after hunting season. This knife worked great for my buddy, he had a great time using it in WY after he got to meet Ed Fowler in person, who he said was a hell of a nice guy and great to talk to !!! They ended up killing 3 mule deer and had a great hunt. This knife processed all 3 deer and held a great edge throughout with no sharpening.

thanks again
steve
 
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