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Brush cutter blade

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DC:
Does anyone recognise this kind of brush cutter blade. It used to have pins in the holes that clipped into a sort of axe handle. What I'm wondering about is whether it's decent steel. It would make a nice small drawknife. It takes a nice edge, I just don't know if it will keep it. I did a spark test and it wasn't all sparkley like high carbon. It had a few sparkles but it also threw off little balls like ball lightening for lack of a better description. I have a feeling that they were throw away replaceable blades but that doesn't necessarily mean they were crap steel does it.

mmattockx:
Does a file touch it?


Mark

DC:
Yes a file will cut it. I compared filing it to filing a saw blade and it's about the same. I redid the spark test on my grinder and it sparks very much like a file so it's looking hopeful.

Handforged:
the little blue light balls are likely chromium. My guess is it's 4140, possibly 1050-1060...all are lower carbon steels used for cutting tools like that. Before messing with it much I would try to heat treat it. Get it hot and quench it in mineral oil. If it will skate a file then anneal and have some fun with it. If a file will still bite then it won't get hard enough to make a knife, unless you plan to is it as layer for a Damascus with a high carbon cutting edge.

DC:
I was hoping to use it as is. I'll stick some handles on it and try it first. See how it holds an edge. I can always mess with the heat treat later. I was just hoping that someone had some experience with these blades and knew if they were decent steel or not. I've seen some comments on here about some alloys that required special treatment. If this was one of them I would hate to mess up a "good" blade trying to make it "better" :D

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