2 Swedish Air Force survival knives

[Ankerson]

The steel would not be anything exciting. If it's stainless it would be 420 or 440A. If it's carbon steel it would be a 1095 or W1. Claiming it is some special high wear resistance steel is wishful thinking.

Silver doesn't improve steel, Faraday was wrong.

Larrin,

Quick question.

Any idea of the steel Randall Knives actually uses for the stainless blades?

I have heard 440B and 440B like, but never a straight answer and Randall has never actually said for sure as far as I know.


Jim

[SpyderEdgeForever]

Actually, sir, I must correct you on this fair point. First of all I have great respect and admiration for your fine metallurgical knowhow and hands on experience. Sir Michael Faraday never made definite statements that silver improved the properties of steel. He only carried out experiments with silver, chromium, and other atoms being added to the iron carbon matrix. It was not a conclusive statement he made. Thank you.

Please do a basic check of your information before correcting someone. People may read your post and believe your information to be accurate and thus be misled.

"This alloy is decidedly superior to the very best steel, and this excellence is unquestionably owing to combination with a minute portion of Silver. It has been repeatedly, made, and always with equal success. Various cutting tools have been made from it of the best quality."
"From the facility of obtaining silver, it is probable that its alloy with steel is the most valuable of those we have made. To enumerate its applications, would be to name almost every edge-tool."
- Stodart and Faraday
https://scholar.archive.org/work/npcabr ... 652361.pdf

According to the electroplating industry silver plating of steel does improve the steel. It is not as good as the better alloys we have today and the effect lasts as long as the plating holds up. But back then they did not have alot to work with. From a silver plating website: "Summary. The use of silver plating on stainless steel and other corrosion resistant alloys including Inconel®, Nitronic® and Hastelloy® offers many surface engineering benefits. Silver plating imparts outstanding lubricity, anti-galling and corrosion resistance benefits even at high temperatures and heavy loads."

[SpyderEdgeForever]

Kwakster, Eskilstuna, Sweden, was a major center of blade making until the WW2 period. EKA is from there. Supposedly the Danes also made great knives along with the Norwegiens and Finnish. Sadly a combination of changing economics and growing anti knife sentiment led to a decrease in knife makers.

[Larrin]

According to the electroplating industry silver plating of steel does improve the steel. It is not as good as the better alloys we have today and the effect lasts as long as the plating holds up. But back then they did not have alot to work with. From a silver plating website: "Summary. The use of silver plating on stainless steel and other corrosion resistant alloys including Inconel®, Nitronic® and Hastelloy® offers many surface engineering benefits. Silver plating imparts outstanding lubricity, anti-galling and corrosion resistance benefits even at high temperatures and heavy loads."

Plating with silver has nothing to do with alloying with silver. It's like saying you should add Teflon to steel because when it is a coating on steel it makes it nonstick.

[Larrin]

Larrin,

Quick question.

Any idea of the steel Randall Knives actually uses for the stainless blades?

I have heard 440B and 440B like, but never a straight answer and Randall has never actually said for sure as far as I know.


Jim

Reportedly it is 440B. The last "official" statement that it is 440B is quite old so there is a possibility it has changed but probably not. The Story of Knife Steel talks about the history of their steel choices.

[Ankerson]

Larrin,

Quick question.

Any idea of the steel Randall Knives actually uses for the stainless blades?

I have heard 440B and 440B like, but never a straight answer and Randall has never actually said for sure as far as I know.


Jim

Reportedly it is 440B. The last "official" statement that it is 440B is quite old so there is a possibility it has changed but probably not. The Story of Knife Steel talks about the history of their steel choices.

Yeah that's pretty much what I heard.

[SpyderEdgeForever]

According to the electroplating industry silver plating of steel does improve the steel. It is not as good as the better alloys we have today and the effect lasts as long as the plating holds up. But back then they did not have alot to work with. From a silver plating website: "Summary. The use of silver plating on stainless steel and other corrosion resistant alloys including Inconel®, Nitronic® and Hastelloy® offers many surface engineering benefits. Silver plating imparts outstanding lubricity, anti-galling and corrosion resistance benefits even at high temperatures and heavy loads."

Plating with silver has nothing to do with alloying with silver. It's like saying you should add Teflon to steel because when it is a coating on steel it makes it nonstick.

Thank you Larrin. Yes I am aware a coating or plating is not the same as alloying. Apparently Faraday made an erroneous statement. But his electrical and other chemistry work makes up for that.

A question for you: Nikola Tesla said room temperature electrolytic steel production would be an improvement over the large blast furnaces and even electrical furnaces of the day. I have read scientific and engineering articles related to attempts to produce steel that way but it has not become mass producible. If that could be done in an economically viable way, would it be a great improvement?

An even more exotic method would be if humanity could engineer bacteria or organisms that could somehow produce steel at ambient conditions. But once we reached that point it may be easier to make stronger stuff like diamondoid and novel ceramic compounds.

[SpyderEdgeForever]

Kwakster by the way those Holmburg knives look like the Marbles Ideal.

[Ankerson]

Depends on how it's heat treated, I have seen some 154CM and 440C that is a bear to sharpen even with modern day stones.

I have experience with Buck's old 440C steel (so far i've never hand reground 154CM), but while indeed hard to hand regrind & sharpen, it can be done well on good quality black SiC, be it stones or SiC paper on glass.

That same good quality black SiC however does only very little and very slow to this Swedish stainless steel (even the coarse grits), while the harder yet much finer green SiC eats the steel just fine.
The difference might be tungsten carbides instead of chromium carbides (and a lot of them), but absolute proof about this i don't have yet.
Maybe i need to find someone with an XRF scanner.

Seriously, you aren't going to find out anything special about the steel. There just wasn't a lot of options back then in stainless steels to be had. We are talking about the 1950's here, you can count the stainless steels that were available on one hand.

[Ankerson]

Well, i did find out one thing though.
It seems that certain Japanese knife collectors are searching the globe for these vintage Swedish steel knives, apparently for the steel quality & purity.
Haven't heard the same thing about 440C steel yet.

Apparently they bought into the urban legend.

Likely a fad until the next one comes along.

[SpyderEdgeForever]

Kwakster and Larrin and Doc and others, do you remember the Frank Richtig knives? It is a great knife mystery. He was in Riply's Believe It Or Not and made and sold kitchen and hunting and fighting knives decades ago. Like the old Hoyt Buck knives and Harry Morseth knives and Rudy Ruana handmade knives they could be hammered through hardened heat treated steel bolts without serious blade damage. That was apparently torture testing before Lynn Thompson at Cold Steel with his blade through the car door test. But car steel is not tempered.

Some claimed Richtig rediscovered wootz Damascus Steel. University engineers tested his blade years later and confirmed they were very hard and cut like that. I think they tried to replicate the steel but failed.


I had a friend who was a mystic that believed old time black smiths poured their psychic soul energy into their blades to make them have near supernatural cutting power. I do NOT believe that.

[Ankerson]

Kwakster and Larrin and Doc and others, do you remember the Frank Richtig knives? It is a great knife mystery. He was in Riply's Believe It Or Not and made and sold kitchen and hunting and fighting knives decades ago. Like the old Hoyt Buck knives and Harry Morseth knives and Rudy Ruana handmade knives they could be hammered through hardened heat treated steel bolts without serious blade damage. That was apparently torture testing before Lynn Thompson at Cold Steel with his blade through the car door test. But car steel is not tempered.

Some claimed Richtig rediscovered wootz Damascus Steel. University engineers tested his blade years later and confirmed they were very hard and cut like that. I think they tried to replicate the steel but failed.


I had a friend who was a mystic that believed old time black smiths poured their psychic soul energy into their blades to make them have near supernatural cutting power. I do NOT believe that.

Yeah, hammering though bolts, nails etc. isn't all that big a deal really.

I have done it with S30V and S110V before.

[SpyderEdgeForever]

Kwakster and Larrin and Doc and others, do you remember the Frank Richtig knives? It is a great knife mystery. He was in Riply's Believe It Or Not and made and sold kitchen and hunting and fighting knives decades ago. Like the old Hoyt Buck knives and Harry Morseth knives and Rudy Ruana handmade knives they could be hammered through hardened heat treated steel bolts without serious blade damage. That was apparently torture testing before Lynn Thompson at Cold Steel with his blade through the car door test. But car steel is not tempered.

Some claimed Richtig rediscovered wootz Damascus Steel. University engineers tested his blade years later and confirmed they were very hard and cut like that. I think they tried to replicate the steel but failed.


I had a friend who was a mystic that believed old time black smiths poured their psychic soul energy into their blades to make them have near supernatural cutting power. I do NOT believe that.

Yeah, hammering though bolts, nails etc. isn't all that big a deal really.

I have done it with S30V and S110V before.

This is good to know. Does this mean any steel with a good heat treat can do it? And what then would you say is a monumental defining cutting test? Edge holding over time?

[Ankerson]

Kwakster and Larrin and Doc and others, do you remember the Frank Richtig knives? It is a great knife mystery. He was in Riply's Believe It Or Not and made and sold kitchen and hunting and fighting knives decades ago. Like the old Hoyt Buck knives and Harry Morseth knives and Rudy Ruana handmade knives they could be hammered through hardened heat treated steel bolts without serious blade damage. That was apparently torture testing before Lynn Thompson at Cold Steel with his blade through the car door test. But car steel is not tempered.

Some claimed Richtig rediscovered wootz Damascus Steel. University engineers tested his blade years later and confirmed they were very hard and cut like that. I think they tried to replicate the steel but failed.


I had a friend who was a mystic that believed old time black smiths poured their psychic soul energy into their blades to make them have near supernatural cutting power. I do NOT believe that.

Yeah, hammering though bolts, nails etc. isn't all that big a deal really.

I have done it with S30V and S110V before.

This is good to know. Does this mean any steel with a good heat treat can do it? And what then would you say is a monumental defining cutting test? Edge holding over time?

Technique and geometry also has a lot to do with it.

Well knives are made to cut stuff so some sort of cutting test would be best really don't you think?

[SpyderEdgeForever]

Kwakster and Larrin and Doc and others, do you remember the Frank Richtig knives? It is a great knife mystery. He was in Riply's Believe It Or Not and made and sold kitchen and hunting and fighting knives decades ago. Like the old Hoyt Buck knives and Harry Morseth knives and Rudy Ruana handmade knives they could be hammered through hardened heat treated steel bolts without serious blade damage. That was apparently torture testing before Lynn Thompson at Cold Steel with his blade through the car door test. But car steel is not tempered.

Some claimed Richtig rediscovered wootz Damascus Steel. University engineers tested his blade years later and confirmed they were very hard and cut like that. I think they tried to replicate the steel but failed.


I had a friend who was a mystic that believed old time black smiths poured their psychic soul energy into their blades to make them have near supernatural cutting power. I do NOT believe that.

Yeah, hammering though bolts, nails etc. isn't all that big a deal really.

I have done it with S30V and S110V before.

This is good to know. Does this mean any steel with a good heat treat can do it? And what then would you say is a monumental defining cutting test? Edge holding over time?

Technique and geometry also has a lot to do with it.

Well knives are made to cut stuff so some sort of cutting test would be best really don't you think?

Then how about cutting a commonly cut material a few thousand times?

[Manixguy@1994]

Thank you so much sharing your restoration projects , they are beautiful ! Your thread is one of my favorites in Off Topic . MG2