Quality of edged weapons (101)?

[spiral]

Savage.. but true & correct!

Also the butterscotch horn hilt was clearly cracked while still on the animal, but was still used for the hilt.

So despite good colour clearly a defective & imperfect material, so presumably not top quality.

spiral

[driftwould]

Originally Posted by spiral

Savage.. but true & correct!

Also the butterscotch horn hilt was clearly cracked while still on the animal, but was still used for the hilt.

So despite good colour clearly a defective & imperfect material, so presumably not top quality.

spiral

Savage I don't mind. Clear and concise? Now that's useful! Your comment about the horn being cracked while still on the animal, and the significance of that, was also a useful and much appreciated observation, thanks. As a novice, I'm quite aware that there is a lot that I don't know that I need to know. As an educator, I know it's my duty as a learner to ask clarifying questions and to learn from unsuccessful attempts. It was suggested above that I count mistakes like this as tuition on my education, but if I'm to do so I need to know why and how they are mistakes. Only experienced people such as yourselves can clarify this. I'm also hoping that this thread can help other people in my position to learn more before making purchases. So please, be brutal and tell me everything you see that's, shall we say, less then perfect on these pieces! I'm not afraid of embarrassing myself- I said this was 101 right in the title. I AM afraid of making similar and/or easily avoidable mistakes in the future.

[A. G. Maisey]

Yes, a lot of people do not understand that often the only way to get the information or knowledge that one requires is to ask precise, specific questions.

This way the information can be tailored to the level that the person asking the question is ready to accept and understand. Give too much info, it gets lost, give too little and it gets lost. Ask the right question and hopefully the info given is just sufficient.

I don't have any pics of western style knives that I made, I still have a couple of these, but cannot immediately put my hand on them, I do have a very large quantity of damascus blades that I made, but again, no pics, however, here is a link to a page in my site, if you scroll down a bit there are 2 or 3 keris blades that I made a few years ago:-

http://www.kerisattosanaji.com/PBXIIempus.html

[blue lander]

An anecdote about Uzbek pichok knives

A little while back I bought a pichok, not nearly as nice as the ones you got but nice enough. It seemed sturdily built and sharp as a razor, and I intended to use it as a kitchen knife.

A few weeks later I was at a bar, and I overheard a man saying he was from Uzbekistan. I started chatting with him and mentioned that I bought a pichok and that I thought it was great. He looked at me like I was crazy and asked why I would bother importing one. He said they were junk and that he'd never use one unless he had no alternative. I asked why he wouldn't use one, he replied "because I know the kind of metal they use to make them." I probably should have asked him to elaborate, but it was enough to give me second thoughts about using that knife.

[driftwould]

Blue Lander and AG, thanks for the replies. Thanks to everyone for helping, the input I got from this discussion has given me a LOT of good places to start learning! Quality of handle materials, quality and type of steels, fit and finish, and on a side note, I've been looking into damascus. Two questions for the general public:

1) I'd still like to hear more thoughts on what you would take into consideration when judging the quality of steel in a modern-made, traditional knife. What standards should we hold something like that to, and would the seemingly obvious idea that they would be different from place to place (say, tribal Africa vs. tribal Taiwan (good access to modern materials, the modern world in general)) be correct? For that matter, what about an old one?

2) In keeping with the "101" theme, and hoping this will be useful for other beginners in the future (as well as myself), are there any other areas of general knowledge you can recommend I look into to build the broad knowledge base I need, given that I will - very regrettably - never have the time available to become a professional knife smith myself and learn by that route?

[A. G. Maisey]

Mate, you don't need to be a chicken to know what an egg looks like:- you can gain more knowledge than you would ever need about custom knives by reading the hard copy literature. I suggest a good place to start might be the books written by Jim Hrisoulas.

Re steel quality.

there's damascus and damascus. You can forge weld any two different ferric materials together and get something that looks like damascus, but it won't necessarily perform like damascus. A lot of the current stuff out of India and China is like this.

All the damascus that I made I used 01 steel in, combined with various other materials such as wrought iron, mild steel, nickel & so on.Whatever is used should be heat treated to the specs of the high carbon steel used. This is the reason I used 01, it is easy for an ordinary smith working with fire to get a good result in heat treatment with this steel.

However, depending on intended use, you can make a useable blade from ordinary mild steel which has only small quantities of carbon, its just that the blade will not hold an edge as long, but on the pro side, its not likely to break either. In fact, for a short stabbing weapon mild steel performs pretty good, and costs very little.

As to forming an opinion on the quality of steel based upon what you can actually see, well, I personally cannot.

Give a mirror finish to a piece of mild steel and it can look just as good as the finest hi-tech alloy steel. In fact, a lot of knives made as works of art are made from steel that has not been heat-treated. Why? Because the maker doesn't want to blow 40 or more hours work on a heat treat that goes bad, so he doesn't take the risk. The thing was made as a work of art, not a user.

If we are talking about trad knives, OK, here's the indicator:- go down to the local market and look at what the meat and vege sellers are using; if these are the local knives they are knives made to use.You can bet they're not fancy.

The user daggers and throat cutters of yesteryear are now replaced by more modern weapons, so these types of trad knife are often simply dress knives and made to dress standards not use standards. If you want a trad ethnic knife as a work of art that is also a user seek out a good, reliable maker and order one.

[JamesKelly]

Axes. In the late 1960's I did some work with the old Kelly Axe factory, Charleston, West Virginia, USA. Axes at that time were made of AISI 1086 carbon steel, meaning steel with a nominal carbon content about 0.86% (sorry, I do not know corresponding W.Nr. or EN #). They heat treated both axe and hammer heads in a lead bath. As I recall, tempered hardness of an axe was about Rockwell C55. The heaviest hammer they had made was 50 pounds, or 22.7 kilogram. That is the origin of the American expression "putting the hammer down" (i.e. go as fast as you can). When two steamboats chose to race on the Mississippi river one way to get some extra speed out of that old steam engine was to set a 50 pound hammer down on the steam safety valve. If the boiler was strong enough, you might win the race. If not, well, it no longer mattered.

What is the best steel & how hard should it be? Depends upon what you want the knife to do. If you make your living skinning bears or cutting ropes then a tool steel called D2 in the US, about 12% chromium 2% carbon, maybe Rockwell C 58 to 62, is appropriate for good edge holding.
If your life depends upon that blade not breaking, then a lower carbon & softer temper is appropriate. I.e., you want a tougher steel, less likely to break when abused. In the USA power lawnmower blades, all of them, were formerly made of AISI 1070 carbon steel (nominal 0.7% carbon), quenched in molten salt ("austempered" maybe 300C/600F), to end up with a hardness about Rockwell C40. This hardness is about the best combination of hardness and toughness one can get. No, if will not hold an edge as long as your favorite 440C blade at Rockwell C58, but neither is it like to break when you swing it at a large heavy or hard object. Now in the USA they use a lower carbon steel, 10B35, which has boron (B) for hardenability but only 0.35% carbon, for better toughness. These things do need to remain intact after striking the odd rock (or foot . . .).
Steel heat treatment is well described in various publications, some used to be free from the steel companies. It helps learn it from some knowledgeable metallurgical source. E.g., if you like to forge your blades, then do anneal them before hardening, to refine the grain a bit. Makes them a LOT tougher at the same hardness. Water with about 10% common salt in it quenches plain carbon steel faster, with less chance of distortion and cracking. &c, &c, &c.

I am a metallurgist & just edited this post as I am in a Grumpy Mood & this is a polite site. Apologies to all who read the un-edited version. Just put my less grumpy comments above.