Now this is something of a challenge. Friends of ours had asked for some really thin blades for re-enactment camping, as thin and slicey as it would go and stronger than usual. Hm. Wait... I daresay there´s something.. can´t put my finger on it... erm... HOWDAF***???
I grumbled a bit, thought and mumbled, grumbled some more and set off to work. I figured spring steel would be best suited for the task, with a triple quench dynamic tempering, meaning slowly, deliberately sinking the blade into the quench (heated, boiling lard), and then taking it out to temper with the rest heat from the spine to a blueish hue, resulting in a blade that is not THAT hard (but at an estimated 56 HRC still hard enough). The blade is wider to make for a low profile and will get an even thinner high convex bevel than usual on water stones.
It was not easy to take a picture of the spine. It´s 0,2mm thick at its thinnest... I am not quite sure how long it will last, but still it´s a fascinating project to learn how to make real knives, not prybars. The question is, where the best compromise will be... projects like this help me to tune in the extremes.
And some knife out of the monster Damascus billet by Matthias Zwissler. It will be a light do-it-all knife with no great frills whatsoever, but I am experimenting with some heat treating techniques. For instance, it´s already normalized, so soft you can easily file it. Still have some work to do on it, but still, I just deep-froze it. It´s not fluid nitrogene, but we´ll see how it turns out;-). I´ll keep you posted!
