![]() ![]() It has been hand forged by our blacksmiths with a beautiful twist design. The K2 Knife is more than a tool however… it’s a work of art. Need a special present for the man in your life? For the railroad enthusiast, hunter, or knife collector in your life, our unique railroad spike knife is a great addition to their toolbox. It's a wonderful birthday present, best man gift or father of the bride gift. I sometimes spray clear acrylic on the handle to keep it from rusting, too.This hand forged knife made of steel with a high iron content, makes a perfect 6th anniversary gift of iron, or traditional steel gift for your 11th anniversary. When you're finished, use a little wax on the blade to deter rust. I say go a head and clean it up and make the nicest knife you can out of it. It sounds like your knife has been forged and quenched. They sharpen easily and make decent letter openers. Some REALLY cool knifemakers (e.g., Tai Goo) make some really cool knives from RR spikes. They are never going to be really tough blades, but that's OK They're still neat. The thing about RR spikes is that they are cheap and the knives you make from them are interesting conversation pieces. There may be other things in a RR spike (like copper) that affect the hardness, but again, that's a case for another search. To a knifemaker, that's way too low and the steel just won't harden well enough to make a quality knife. RR spikes usually run around 0.3% carbon. (It can contain more carbon, but let's avoid that case for the moment.) These are referred to as the 10xx steels, where 1080 contains 0.80% carbon. ![]() Straight carbon steel can dissolve up to about. For now, let's just stick to the simple case for RR spikes. If you want that, you'll need to do a bit of searching around here. What I've said so far is an over-simplification that contains almost none of the technical details. Now different bladesmiths have different ways they do these steps and different steels are treated other ways. (I say carefully because you don't want to overheat it.) At that point you can - carefully - finish the blade and polish it. (This is usually repeated a few times.) The blade will lose some hardness, but will be less brittle.Īll that leaves the surface pretty cruddy. So it is then tempered by holding it at 300 or 400 degrees for a couple hours, then letting it cool to room temperature. That maximizes the 'hardness' of the steel, but it leaves a lot of stresses in it. ![]() In the case of plain carbon steel like a RR spike, this would be done in water, brine, or oil. Then it is heated to critical - at which point it becomes non-magnetic - and quenched quickly. The steel is then 'normalized' by heating it and allowing it to air cool a few times so that stresses are relieved and the grain structure is finer. Annealed steel is 'soft' and can be forged and worked into it's primary shape. To do that, the steel is heated to a critical temperature and then allowed to cool slowly. But here's a short version of it: When you forge a piece of steel to make a knife, the first thing that you need to do is anneal it. ![]() There are some great descriptions of heat treating around this place - some written by metallurgists who actually understand this stuff pretty deeply. Reading between the lines, gunnut doesn't have a means to heat the spike to non-mag. ![]()
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