Hey guys , im a material science and engineering student. Im looking to make my first knife however I don’t know any place to make it. Do you guys happen to know if there is any place that accepts apprenticeship in taipei or near taipei about knife making?
I seen some blacksmiths around that machining district on chengde rd but I do not know if they accept apprenticeship from foreigners.
However I’ve been wanting to take some A2 or W2 tool steel, and plasma a knife shape out of it, then harden it myself. You could do it with an angle grinder if you have to. If you don’t have the equipment to heat treat steel there are shops who can heat treat something for you.
Hey! Can you provide more information on where that place is? And im thinking of using a SUS 304, do you think that’s feasible or maybe i should use other material? Do you also happen to know where to buy the metal required for knife making. Guides are really appreciated since it’s my first year and I don’t have a mentor yet.
304 stainless won’t make good blade. They are for corrosion resistance and for making food grade surface/containers. They have the same hardness as mild steel and can’t really be hardened. They’re ok for making silverware knife but not any knife that’s worth keeping or using because it will dull quickly. If you want stainless steel that can be hardened you will need 416R or 17-4 stainless, but nobody in Taiwan has them.
You want something like 1080/1095, tool steels like A2, O2, W1, etc or even SK-something steels. Something with a high carbon content. As to where to buy them you need to find places that supplies steel. They will have various steels used for various purpose. Those steels will rust, because they are not stainless, but stainless steel really isn’t for making cutting tools.
This shop should have it.
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I guess a lot of off-the-shelf knives are made of stainless, hence the inspiration. Mild steels are tougher, hold better edges once tempered, but need tender love & care in our humid, sulfury environs.
@d1234 are you in your 2nd semester? Focusing on metallurgy, or headed for the silicon foundries?
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They’ll make ok knives if you don’t mind sharpening them all day though. But you need stainless steel that has more carbon content in order to make knives out of them, and 304 isn’t it.
Mild steel, as in low carbon steel, cannot be hardened at all. Heating and quenching them just makes them blacken but does not make them hard at all. Only way to harden mild steel is case hardening. Mild steel is used in construction because they are easy to weld. High carbon steel don’t like welding, the weld bead cracks.
You need at least medium carbon steel before it will respond to hardening or tempering.
It’s been a little while since I’ve read a steel tertiary diagram. I always expected mild to have more carbon content, but solely on that metric, stainless is a mild steel, lol.
Most of my experience is for magnetic applications, so I get out of my depth pretty fast anymore when it comes to steel
1018 steel is what is known as mild steel. They have less than 0.18% carbon content, and so is low carbon steel. We use them because they can be easily welded. You do not want steel to harden when welding, the hardening causes cracking.
Knives need high carbon content, like around 0.95% carbon content.
Hi, Yes im on my second semester as of the moment at NTUST . I don’t have a field of focus yet and just wanted to do some experimenting for extra points. However what im most interested in is really not practical, like how to use flowers in the field of material science and engineering. Im also think of embedding flowers into the knife but im quite worried because of strength and functionality and moisture and decay.
What do you mean embedding a flower into a knife? Do you mean engraving flower onto the blade, or inlaying flower pattern into the wood handle? Both can be done.
Part of making a knife means you gotta heat the steel past its magnetic point (the point at which it is no longer magnetic, and this is around 800C to about 1200C), then quench it in oil or water (and this is specific to material, use the wrong material and it will crack upon quenching).
Just adding some flower pattern onto the wood handle 
however i really have no idea how to do this at all. I can’t find a professor at my school to mentor me. If you guys know any academic papers about creating knives please do let me know!
Because NTUST, like most universities, don’t care about practical applications and making stuff. They are concerned about academic stuff, rote memorization, and research. Most those professors might know theories on hardening of metal, metallurgy, and such but none of them knows how to harden or heat treat metal. There’s not going to be much academic papers on how to make knives, but there’s a million youtube videos on how to forge blades.
What you’re asking is more blue collar/manufacturing. Perhaps NTUST has departments on metallurgy or manufacturing and they will provide better resources on what you are asking, however your best bet is really visiting blacksmiths or what they call “black hand” in Chinese.
Or consult the mechanical engineering department.
A lot of blue collar jobs like blacksmithing is learned by doing.
Just so you know, old files make good knives, assuming they are high carbon steel and not case hardened like cheap files.
Truck leaf spring should also make good knives. Spring steel is normally high carbon too.
So does the NTUST not have a training workshop in-house?
Or perhaps a mechanical shop where demo / prototype / experimental equipment is built?
I think you only need quite basic facilities for what you’re wanting to do.
And about hardening: why not start with mild steel and then just case harden the cutting edge area?
I would think any mechanical engineers would know this.
Mild steel is low carbon steel, with less than 0.18% of carbon in the steel.
Such steel will never, ever harden no matter what. You can heat it until it’s almost melted, then quench it in water, and it will still be soft like butter. Mild steel is used in structural beams, construction, etc. because they are easy to weld. They are not used in say power lifting equipment such as forklift tines (typically a higher carbon steel is used, and those cannot be welded under any circumstance).
Only way to harden the cutting edge of a mild steel blade is to case harden it. This means encasing the blade inside a clay container filled with carbon source (charcoal, supposedly some people use bone powder, etc.) and the whole thing is left inside a furnace for hours. The problem with case hardening is that the steel is only surface hardened, the inside is still quite soft. That means any necessary grinding will just grind past the hard edge and the blade will be crap.
Use the right material to make blades, that means high carbon steel, or spring steel is a good blade material as well.
Alternatively, I guess you can hard face a piece of mild steel by using high carbon steel as filler rod and TIG weld the edge with it.
I would expect the uni to have a central workshop where you could get this done. When I worked in NTHU they had a pretty comprehensive machine shop and I’d send the guy there CAD files and he’d make up whatever tools/parts I needed.
You should really just look this stuff up, or simply avoid giving precise values if you don’t know precise values and can’t be bothered finding them. Exact definitions are going to vary and there’s probably some reliable information in the rest of your post, but who knows?
(I’m no kind of expert in this, but I do tend to edit a lot of papers about alloys for work and it is an active field of academic research, despite what you wrote above.)
Mild steel has a carbon content of between 0.16% and 0.29 % maximum
(Source)
Mild steel contains approximately 0.05–0.30% carbon
(Source)
Low-carbon steels contain carbon in the range of 0.05 to 0.25%
(Source)
Mild steel is also considered low carbon steel as it is defined as having a low carbon content of 0.05–0.25%.
(Source)
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Case hardening makes sense because you maintain a ductility in the core.
I believe samurai swords involve that as part of traditional making.
Some elaboration about that here:
“Making a Japanese sword”
Fact check! That’s not the definition of mild steel and mild steel can be hardened.
Might what to find another butter source if yours is as hard as mild steel.
More tosh, high carbon steel can be welded.
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Do you insist on grilling me over “yes but” or “exception” type facts?
High carbon steel can theoretically be welded but it is much harder to do so, requiring pre heat and all that otherwise the weld cracks, so people don’t generally do it. Just like cast iron can theoretically be welded, but it’s so hard to do it that few welders advise doing it at all. So most will say instead of welding to repair cast iron, they rather braze it. I doubt someone who doesn’t even know much about making knives can successfully weld high carbon steel.
And when tradesmen refer to mild steel they generally refer to 1018 steel, they cannot be hardened at all except for case hardening. I don’t know what academic circle call mild steel. When you’re up to the 0.30% carbon content then it isn’t really “mild steel” anymore but medium carbon steel, which can be hardened.