best way to cut tool steel without metalworking tools?

[Zach England]

I have a large collection of old plane irons that I would like to cut into strips that I can grind down for marking knives and other small tools. I don't have metalworking tools. I have a hack saw, an angle grinder, a bench grinder and a belt grinder. Can anyone advise on the best way to cut these up? I tried the hack saw and it didn't work so well. The steel is just too hard.

[David Epperson]

I have a large collection of old plane irons that I would like to cut into strips that I can grind down for marking knives and other small tools. I don't have metalworking tools. I have a hack saw, an angle grinder, a bench grinder and a belt grinder. Can anyone advise on the best way to cut these up? I tried the hack saw and it didn't work so well. The steel is just too hard.
With the tool you listed the angle grinder/side grinder might be easiest. There are metal slitting wheels that will do what you want - I think they are called cutting disks, and are only about 0.050 to 0.060 think so they don't take a lot of kerf.

[Dave Beauchesne]

With the tool you listed the angle grinder/side grinder might be easiest. There are metal slitting wheels that will do what you want - I think they are called cutting disks, and are only about 0.050 to 0.060 think so they don't take a lot of kerf.

Zach:

x2 on what David said - at work we use WALTER brand - ' Zip Discs ' and I know Makita makes them. You need the arbour size of the angle grinder, diameter and you are good to go. Don't expect to follow the line first time out, there is a bit of a learning curve. Also, do it outside if possible, and wear a dust mask and face shield - Safety First !!

BTW, there are cheapo no name brands of the discs; they are not as robust, and the last thing you need is the thing chunking out on you with pieces flying everywhere.

Dave Beauchesne

[David Weaver]

I think it would be a WHOLE lot easier to buy a couple of thicknesses of O1 stock from mcmaster carr or whoever has verified stock and just use that. You can harden and temper it exactly the way you want to do it very easily. I think the money saved is maybe not worth the hassle unless you just want to do it for the challenge.

You would also do very well to take the hack saw blade you ran the smarts off of and make a marking knife with that assuming it was a bimetal blade. Abrade the paint and teeth off of it and grind it to a point with a bevel and stick it in something with a ferrule.

We've really gone nuts with custom marking knives - way off the deep end. There is nothing to them and no great reason not to make them yourself out of just about anything (I do have a couple of nice ones, admittedly, i can't turn small stuff as pretty as dave jeske does - that's for sure!).

(by the way, will the zip discs draw the temper out near the cut leaving you a bunch of slow-going with a grinder since you'll have to grind away the drawn edge without heating up the adjacent metal?)

[Bruce Haugen]

The angle grinder is the way to go. Get the zip disks or "skinny wheels" as we call them. It's not necessary to cut all the way through. Just score a line about half way through with light, repeated passes and then bend. It will break easily.

I've done this a fair amount. The used up plane blades make nice marking knives, among other things.

I'd also warn you not to stand directly in front of the shower o' sparks. It's a steady stream of hot metal. Be careful where those buggers go. I burned a hole in a really nice sweatshirt that way.

[john brenton]

I'm with David 100%. Depending on what kind of plane irons you have, you could be sitting on enough cash to buy new steel, or buy all the tools you are thinking about making.

If you're talking about run of the mill stanley irons, then perhaps you wouldn't pull in that much cash, but if you're talking older tapered irons, or other thicker irons then it would be a waste to hack them up.

I use an exacto knife, but I've seen marking knives from Crown (I believe) going for just a little over $10. Of you can snip out a piece from a beat up hand saw that would be just as good.


I have a large collection of old plane irons that I would like to cut into strips that I can grind down for marking knives and other small tools. I don't have metalworking tools. I have a hack saw, an angle grinder, a bench grinder and a belt grinder. Can anyone advise on the best way to cut these up? I tried the hack saw and it didn't work so well. The steel is just too hard.

[Zach England]

Thanks for the good advice. I did not realize how inexpensively I could buy steel for, so I found this:

http://www.onlinemetals.com/merchant.cfm?pid=11671&step=4&showunits=inches&id=246&top_cat=0


I don't know much about how to temper it, but I am sure it has been discussed ad nauseam so I'll search for it in a bit.

The reason I want to make my own marking knives has more to do with the exercise than the product. I have a veritas marking knife, but sometimes it is too wide and too thick to get into tight spaces. I nearly ordered a blue spruce knife, but got thinking about it and decided I could likely make one in an hour for a lot less than $50. I am kind of getting into turning at the moment so I am taking every opportunity I can find to make tool handles.

[David Weaver]

hacksaw blade would be nice for making a quick one, like I said, but also any spring steel from a saw. I have a *really* hard saw that's could be scored, snapped and ground, I'll bet it's high 50s hardness, I just can't touch it with a file without turning a file into a shiny flat burnished row of garbage. This thread is maybe a good reminder that I shouldn't just throw it in the trash, at least not the plate.

If you use a regular old piece of a saw plate, it'll probably be high 40s or low 50s rockwell hardness, hard enough to use and soft enough that it could be touched up with files and then stoned.

By the way, tempering the O-1 steel is far easier than baking a batch of cookies, at least from a functional standpoint. You can do it functionally by relying on the stove thermometer, or you can do it precisely by putting a baking thermometer in the oven to tell what the real temperature is in it. You just throw it in the oven for a while and take it out.

[Mike Siemsen]

The easiest way to cut your hardened steel is to anneal it by heating it red hot and cooling it in buried in ashes. You can then use your hack saw to cut it up and file it to shape. reharden and temper and you are good to go. Easier to get new steel. I like used up replaceable planer blades for making knives.
Mike

[george wilson]

I do recommend getting an accurate high temperature thermometer to put into the oven. Brownel's Gunsmithing Supplies sells them. Baking ovens can be as much as 75º off,and there is only a 25º window in hardening and tempering to get the best results from your steel. I don't mean to say that you can't just heat up the 01 with a mapp gas torch,quench it in vegetable oil,polish it off and heat it to a medium brown tempering color,though. For woodworking small tools,you will be fine.

If you were making a very expensive,long run,metal die,more precise methods would be necessary for optimum tool life.

[Zach England]

I do recommend getting an accurate high temperature thermometer to put into the oven. Brownel's Gunsmithing Supplies sells them. Baking ovens can be as much as 75º off,and there is only a 25º window in hardening and tempering to get the best results from your steel. I don't mean to say that you can't just heat up the 01 with a mapp gas torch,quench it in vegetable oil,polish it off and heat it to a medium brown tempering color,though. For woodworking small tools,you will be fine.

If you were making a very expensive,long run,metal die,more precise methods would be necessary for optimum tool life.


Thanks. I do have access to kilns in a ceramics studio, so I may use those to temper. I will do a bit more research.

On another note, I have an etiquette question. Is it ok to post an off-topic problem in this forum? I am wanting some help making some pottery tools and I cannot find anyone in the ceramics community who knows a thing about it. I think it is really up the neander alley.

[Jim Koepke]

Zach,

I am with you on using old plane blades and saw blades to make marking knives. Brass tubing fittings can be used to make nice ferules.

These are some of the pictures of the two knives I made. The first image shows the knife made from a plane blade. This is before I decided it needed a handle. The top knife in the first picture is one made from an old piece of a kitchen knife. It is beveled on both sides, so it is not as good for marking.

176625176624176626


My two marking knives are both shop made. Both the saw plate and the plane blade were cut with a Dremel and a cutting wheel. Old plane blades are laminated, so keep track of which side is which. They are only hard on the business side.


Thanks. I do have access to kilns in a ceramics studio, so I may use those to temper. I will do a bit more research.

On another note, I have an etiquette question. Is it ok to post an off-topic problem in this forum? I am wanting some help making some pottery tools and I cannot find anyone in the ceramics community who knows a thing about it. I think it is really up the neander alley.

This would be fine with me. My wife is into ceramics and I have tried making tools for her. She hasn't done anything in a while, but we plan to set up a kiln in the future.

I think ceramics can be just as neander as wood.

jtk

[David Keller NC]

Zach - Just a note on the cutting up of plane irons. If you have un-slotted tapered irons by Butcher, or any iron marked Norris, Mathieson, Ward or especially James Cam, White or John Green, it would be oh-so-foolish to cut these up. They're worth a lot on the antique tool market. As noted on the thread, the only irons that I'd even consider cutting up would be "modern" (post WWII) stanley irons. The older, v-logo or sweetheart Stanley irons are also worth quite a bit on the antique market - way, way more than the value of the steel in them.

[george wilson]

Some of the names mentioned by David just above are 18th.C. names,like James Cam,J. Green,and I believe White(his saws were if it's the same tool maker).

If you put them in the classified section here,you can get more for them than the 01 of similar size would cost.

A quick way to identify 18th.C. plane irons,the ordinary bench type planes,is they have round tops. In the early 19th.C.,they began lopping the corners off at 45º. Finally,the sides of the plane iron's tops were cut on the long angles we see today. I'm not sure of the dates these changes happened.

[Floyd Mah]

Cut off discs on a Dremel tool can be used to cut hardened steel. I've use it successfully to divide a small block plane blade. It is tedious to use for more than a few inches, but it is a useful technique when you are working on something too small to attack with an angle grinder. Then you can polish the edges with a grinder or sandpaper on a hard, flat surface.

[Rob Fisher]

On another note, I have an etiquette question. Is it ok to post an off-topic problem in this forum? I am wanting some help making some pottery tools and I cannot find anyone in the ceramics community who knows a thing about it. I think it is really up the neander alley.

Zach,

I would definitely be interested in pottery tools questions. I am an aspiring neander and I have done a good bit of ceramics in the past.

Rob

[Chuck Tringo]

I would check Amazon as well, they have good prices and free shipping over $25, or free 2 day shipping at any price for prime members ($79 a year...they lose money on me as I place at least 1 order a week....I buy everything from tools to books to dry kitchen goods there) Their sizes are in fractions which gives me a better idea of what they have.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_nr_scat_16414241_ln?rh=n%3A16414241%2Ck%3At ool+steel+&keywords=tool+steel+&ie=UTF8&qid=1294363343&scn=16414241&h=582c51469fdb40151520d6cb02b66aed3926ff99

[Zach England]

Zach - Just a note on the cutting up of plane irons. If you have un-slotted tapered irons by Butcher, or any iron marked Norris, Mathieson, Ward or especially James Cam, White or John Green, it would be oh-so-foolish to cut these up. They're worth a lot on the antique tool market. As noted on the thread, the only irons that I'd even consider cutting up would be "modern" (post WWII) stanley irons. The older, v-logo or sweetheart Stanley irons are also worth quite a bit on the antique market - way, way more than the value of the steel in them.

Thanks for the input. No, these are blades out of stanley and miller falls planes from the 30s-50s. There is one blade from a bedrock in there which might be worthwhile for something, but I doubt it. I do have some of those old tapered irons and I would never dream of scrapping those. I think they are every bit as good as the Hock irons in most of my planes.

[David Weaver]

The backing metal on those tapered irons is probably mild steel, or if they're really old, wrought iron, anyway. You'd be pretty disappointed with tools made from them.

Try annealing and rehardening one, see what you get. If you can get one hard enough to get a file to skip, you can temper it softer from there if you want.

[george wilson]

Here's how CRUCIBLE tool steel was sorted in the old days: A practiced workman would break samples open,and look at the fine or coarseness of the grain. the carbon tool steel was sorted into razor steel,knife steel,and the lowest carbon(of tool steel) was spindle steel. I think I'm leaving out a grade here. That was the extent of control and testing of the carbon content in those days. Crucible steel was developed in the 18th.C. as a way of improving the old shear steels,dispersing the carbon more evenly. The English made this steel up into the 20th.C. in much the same way. It was called "cast steel."

I'm not saying they didn't make some good carbon steel,but their methods were far less accurate than we have today,and depended upon personal skill completely rather than modern chemical analysis. Some naturally mined steels had carbon in them already. In France,they depended upon the natural carbon content of steel,and they did not know how the English produced carbon steel. Reamur's(sp?) Memoirs is an interesting book I read. He was an industrial spy who was sent to England in the 17th.C. to try to learn how the English made carbon steel. He failed to get direct knowledge,but actually did basically figure it out for himself. Except for throwing a bunch of irrelevant stuff into the mixture,such as the urine of a red headed boy,or the urine of a wine drinking Friar,and other such,carbonaceous material was used to case harden steel rods. These iron rods were deeply case hardened in a large sandstone chest for several days. Then,the rods were bundled together and welded together,and called shear steel. For a better grade,they were folded back on each other and re welded. This made double shear steel. These early carbon tool steels had hard and soft layers,which was good for things like swords,but bad for things like watch springs. Benjamin Huntsman,a maker of watch springs,was frustrated with broken watch springs,and invented the crucible process.

Other natural steels were mined. Wolfram,a German steel,was mined with a natural content of tungsten. Some natural stainless steels were mined,too. All steel Scottish pistols were sometimes made from it. We have a natural stainless fireplace setting of it in Williamsburg. Must have been VERY expensive. Eric Sloane mentions that he found a bright,shiny chisel inside a stone fence in New England.

This is all from memory,so you might want to google the facts.

[maximillian arango]

Back from the dead

So my understanding is that you first heat treat than you shape it?

Just thought this was a good read for a Friday night.

[David Weaver]

Anneal, shape/grind/file, reharden, temper.

[maximillian arango]

Would heat from grinding be a concern?

[David Weaver]

after heat treating it would be. Generally before it, it's not a problem. Once you've hardened and tempered an iron or whatever you're hardening and tempering, you don't want excess heat from grinding.

The exception being high speed steels, where you can get away with an awful lot of heat before it's a problem. HSS is a pain to grind if you have to remove a lot of material, though, and you won't be hardening and tempering it in your shop like you can do with plain carbon steel and O1 steel.

[Daniel Sutton]

If you are want some good information on knifemaking and steel choices, go to www.iforgeiron.com. The knifemaking section has tons of information on getting started. Be careful, just like with woodworking It can get out of control in no time.