04-10-2018, 06:10 PM
We're not just sitting on our thumbs here so a quick update. We will begin shipping out the new SET (Structural Edge Testers) units later this week. One of the units will be headed to Australia and another to the UK so we're trying to cover the corners as well as the middle. It is our plan, here at EOU, to begin generating a knowledge base that can be compared and referred to by our test community and customers.
The first baseline will consist of samples constructed of A2 tool steel hardened in two point increments beginning at HRC50 through HRC62. We'll produce multiples at each hardness level so that we can test for other sharpening parameters such as sharpening angle, initial sharpness level etc. We'll also produce a set that includes a 30° "chisel grind" for our woodworking and industrial customers.
We worked Mark Reich very hard over the telephone this morning and extracted as much advice from him as we could with regard to steels, heat treating and hardening processes. Thank you very much Mark for the guidance. This will be our first real effort inside a structured and comprehensive test group of samples. We hope then to expand the next round to something on the order of 440C and then, later yet, onto some of the more exotic knife steels.
Of course the goal here is to discover what properties of sharpened steel edges contribute and which seem to mitigate edge rolling. With luck, we'll have a much better handle on those questions soon.
On another front we have finally broken down and purchased a new hardness tester. Should be here on Friday. While we're waiting for our test samples to be produced we'll backtrack and conduct hardness tests on some of the knives that we have previously tested and reported in this thread but were only able to give estimates of HRC hardness levels. We'll report those actual hardness levels here next week and perhaps, a few others that you might find interesting. Should be an interesting exercise as well as good practice.
The first baseline will consist of samples constructed of A2 tool steel hardened in two point increments beginning at HRC50 through HRC62. We'll produce multiples at each hardness level so that we can test for other sharpening parameters such as sharpening angle, initial sharpness level etc. We'll also produce a set that includes a 30° "chisel grind" for our woodworking and industrial customers.
We worked Mark Reich very hard over the telephone this morning and extracted as much advice from him as we could with regard to steels, heat treating and hardening processes. Thank you very much Mark for the guidance. This will be our first real effort inside a structured and comprehensive test group of samples. We hope then to expand the next round to something on the order of 440C and then, later yet, onto some of the more exotic knife steels.
Of course the goal here is to discover what properties of sharpened steel edges contribute and which seem to mitigate edge rolling. With luck, we'll have a much better handle on those questions soon.
On another front we have finally broken down and purchased a new hardness tester. Should be here on Friday. While we're waiting for our test samples to be produced we'll backtrack and conduct hardness tests on some of the knives that we have previously tested and reported in this thread but were only able to give estimates of HRC hardness levels. We'll report those actual hardness levels here next week and perhaps, a few others that you might find interesting. Should be an interesting exercise as well as good practice.