jo_smith

I have been in contact with Tower Knives in Osaka Japan. They sell the boxes that I am looking for. Just waiting on the pricing and options. There is something very nice when you receive a good looking box and the knife is in it. It adds a higher class to the blade. Plus you can store the knife in the box. I have a Carter blade I bought a few years ago and when not in use it lives in that box.

Ok guys I am not sure where to post this so move it if it needs to be moved. Over the years I am been working on the eastern style kitchen knives and after buying a few for reference. I have found them to all come in a nice box with care instructions and some more info about the knife. My problem is that I cannot find boxes for my own knives when I sell them. I have for the last couple years tried to find a manufacture or company that sells the lidded cardboard boxes. So I decided to send my question to the power of the internet and see what comes back. So does anyone have any ideas? I have contacted one bladesmith that uses these type boxes with his knives when he sells them, however I guess it is a big secret and he would not share that information. Thank you all so much for the help.

I have been using Takefu steel for 5 years now and the main reason I use it is because it is very clean, easy to HT and get a great cutting edge. Forging at the right temps is amazing. The steel will move very well and so you use less heats to get what you want out of forging. One of the best things about it is the flexability and ability of being able to straightening the blade if it takes a set.

Here is an order that I am about to finish up. It is 7.5" santoku with an octagon handle. The blade is Takefu shiro 2 core with the layers cladding. The forging of this steel is unreal. At the right temp it is like putty. I enjoy working this steel better than anything I have ever used before. The spine is about 1/8" and the edge is down to .010". The handle is buffalo horn for the cap, rosewood and nickel silver. The trickiest part of these type knives is getting the taper of the wa handle correct. Luckily I have access to a Japanese chef that was truly classicly trained in Japan. She is an amazing wealth of information about knives and how they should feel.

I have been doing a lot of reading over the years. I know materials very very well. I have been a mechanical engineer for a long time. However the I have no experience with smelting. Heat treating and understanding known blades steels is something I specialize in but making my own steel is something I have wanted to do for a very long time. As an engineer I tend to research a subject to death before I ever light a fire to make it happen. I bought 40 lbs of Fe2O3 a few years ago and at this point the only thing I have used it for is polishing blades with hamons. Thank you so much for the input. I am going to try it this winter once I get all the materials together. I am currently working on building two charcoal kilns to make good pine charcoal. I live about 1.5 hours from some of the largest pine lumber mills in the country, so pine is cheap to get. I have been forging for a long while, but most of my customers want blades made from stainless and even more exotics steels that cant be forged. I enjoy forging more than stock removal but hey you have to pay the bills.

I have been doing research for along time and would really like to do a run. I work in the auto service industry, so that allows me access to lots of cast iron shavings from turning brake rotors. Now i know that starting with low carbon is the best way start to go. However I have pounds of sand sized shaving. It looks as those most of the cast iron is around 4-5% carbon. From what I have read a blast furnace is the only way to get the carbon content down to a level for making steel. Just looking for some insight. Thanks, Jo

Thank you for that answer. That tells me exactly what I needed to know. The steel I was hoping it was good for HTs at a much much higher temp than that stuff with work at. Guess its back to the SS foil, lol.

That is beautiful! I have recently started forging stainless and carbon. Great shape and lines.

I have been looking for an alternative to foil wrapping during heat treating. I saw an post on another forum about a product called Turco. Has any one had any experience with using it? Or does any one know what other products out there that will do the same thing? Thanks for the help

The only reason I would make san-mai is to be able to totally harden the blade so the steel inside would be able to be sharpened through the life of the knife. Edge quenching san-mai seems to be a bit pointless to me. The only reason I say that is because if you were to edge quench the center steel itself you would not need to weld a billet in the first place. I know that grinding the blade and etching it looks very cool, but when it comes to performance the reason for making san-mai is to have a much harder and more brittle center steel that will cut and flex beyond what it would if it was not clad. Those are only my thoughts and I don't want to upset anyone at all. I tend to look at the over all performance of what I am trying to make vs how it looks. Meaning I tend to make some really ugly blades, lol.

I am entering into the world of bowies and fighters. However I am running into a bit of a problem. The thickness of the ricasso. With many of my skinners and hunters it is pretty easy to work out due to the thickness of the blade. With my race knives there is no real ricasso to speak of. I am doing this to try and get my JS stamp next year and did not get to look at enough examples this year at Blade Show. I normally don't due big blades because they just don't sell for the clients I have. Thing is the ABS wants bowies, fighters, and hunters for your presentation blades. So here I am with trying to make a blade that will pass but I dont want to make it too thin or too thick. I can balance them very well however I dont want the look to be off. Any advice?

I worked in the oil field for a long while and have maybe 20'-30' of drill line. Drill line is extra extra improved wire rope. Now if I understand it correctly that cable is basically a jacket of 1095 with a core of 15N20. It is about 2" in diameter and has been work hardened to the point that only a hot saw will cut it. Has anyone every worked with this cable before?

I had this very same thing happen to me. However I was following the advise of an ABS mastersmith in the set up I was using. He told me about being able to build a san-mai of low carbon and 52100 and quench in warm water. Now he had told me he has been doing this for years and has had great results. So I jumped in with both feet. I built a billet of 203E and 52100. Welded up everything, hammred it out to a very thin, .080", and then annealed it. Normalized a couple times and let it sit for a day. Profiled out the blade and into the HT oven and ramped up to temp. Pulled it and quenched. I guess the universe wanted everything to work perfectly cause to my absolute wonder everything came out great. No cracking, no warping and it was perfect. So I tempered it and ground it. One of the most beautiful kitchen blades I have ever done. So with this under my belt I made 6 more billets, Shaped out 6 more blades and HTed them just the very same as the first one. However, all 6 cracked and failed the quench. I had one of them that split nearly 1.5" at the tip before the steel quit moving. I was crushed. At this point I had almost 8 hours in this set of 6. After learning that, I am only going to use my Parks 50 for pretty much everything. Well that is unless it is just a fun experiment I am working on and don't mind losing the blade. Guess you can't believe everything you are told by mastersmiths, lol.

I have tried for the last few years to find a stamp maker that will return an email or phone call. Do any of you have an suggestions?

I have been looking for a long time but have had no success at finding the boxed that most Japanese makers use to sell and ship their knives in. I have a few from blades I have bought over the years but I cannot find a supplier for them. Any one have any ideas?