Its about 1/8thish inches thick at the spine, tapering thinner and less then that at the tip, cutting edge is about 8 inches and its 1.8 inches wide. tempered at 400F for two rounds for 2 hours and 15 minutes and i grayed the handle. i have tested blades with the bend that did not break with this heat treatment. also I worry if i blue this i might lose the hardness i have on it regardless do to how thin the edge is. off the riccaso. I have seen plunges like fail do to stress put on them do to having to thick of a blade but in my opinion, there is no way to have a forged blade with a proper bevel and not have plunge cuts and without a ricasso and cholie it will be an unsafe blade as there is some risk of the hand slipping up and I would have to add a stress point of a guard. I holey believe this will pass the test but if i get a crack it will go up through the hamon which is slightly over 1/3rd the with of the blade...and their in lies the problem with blueing it as i have to bring the blue, so far down and my edge is already at the finished dimension just needing to be trued up to be saving sharp. also, i believe even if i blued the blade if i have a micro crack somewhere down the edge it will still snap even if its tempered up as the modual of elasticity will not change much of the overall knife as its not 100% martensite by design. so should i just risk it might crack because it might crack anyway even if I blue it and this is driving me nuts.
To solve this sort of dilemma, it's always best to build two performance test knives at the same time, making sure to do everything equally. This way, you test one at home and the other is used for the official test.
If your home test blade passes, then you should feel confident that the other one will pass, as well.
Thank you Mr. Andersen this should be fine as I have tested a similar blade with a different tip that was thicker that was a canidate, and it bent just fine. i ran this one through a 2x4 no issue, and once I have it finished will be testing it on some rope(i do not want to attempt a rope cut until I have a handle and final edge geometry on it). I know the heat treatment works. However, I am likely going to need to get a thicker steel pipe to fit the handle so it does not slide, as that can affect things enough to crack what should bend.
IMO....if you've found the ingredients (steel, HT, geometry, etc.) that consistently produce the results you want, don't change the recipe. Remove as many variables as possible. When everything is done consistently, the results are very predictable.
I chose to "blue back" from the spine to approx. 1/2" above the cutting edge for the extra insurance and prefer to apply heat from both sides of the spine.
