Hello everyone , my name is Dwane Oliver. I've been making knives for about 6-7 years. Stock removal and forging when nessesary.
I was reading an article that Mr Cashen wrote about the science behind knifemaking...heat treat , tempering etc.
I was totally blown away. I always knew you had to heat the steel to critical and quench , then temper......but the way he explained it , it just caught me , and I was engulfed. I have read that article( and everything I could find that he wrote ) probably 2-3 times in the last 3 months. I've known about the ABS for several years, but never gave it alot of thought.
I'm a self taught maker, I did go to one mans house and did some forging for a few days, some of you might know him. His name is Tai Goo , and he is an amazing little man. He said I "had the best hammer control of any student he ever had", hmmm cool I said. There are no other knife makers that live real close to where I live , so I did the next best thing. I got on the internet and read, and read, and read some more. Then I would go out to the shop and ruin steel, alot of steel. But I taught myself to freehand hollow grind in about a week.
I really like using high carbon steels like 1095 and 5160, there is a new SS called cmps30v that seems very promsing for edc type knives. I enjoy using damascus and am looking forward to building a press and learning how to make damascus. I built my own KMG copy grinder and my own forge , I love making tools that are usefull.