Choosing Blade Steel for Wooden Gifts: Expert Tips
When we carve wooden gifts, a good carving knife will be a key tool for anyone to maintain a good experience. Previously, we have shared the types of carving knives and today we will explain about choosing the steel for the blade.
The steel used in the knife is also an important criterion for choosing a knife. Carving knives need to be used for a long time and remain sharp, which requires high hardness of the steel. However, a hard steel is weak in toughness, and the blades of carving knives are usually thin, so the risk of breakage is greater.
The higher the carbon content, the harder the steel. But for carving knives used to make wooden gifts, it's clear that too hard or too soft is not an option - it requires a delicate balance. We need to balance according to the corresponding characteristics.
This is a specialized field, the alloy in the steel changes slightly, the nature will change, resulting in a variety of names of knives on the market, you can see a variety of labeled high-carbon steel, high-speed steel, chrome vanadium steel, manganese steel and other various names.
Carbon is the most important hardening factor, all steel needs to add carbon, as well as manganese, tungsten, chromium, vanadium these elements are generally designed to improve the hardness of the blade, corrosion resistance and abrasion resistance, so a good knife is usually not easy to grind.
Which material of knife is more recommended for carving wooden gifts?
- Carving knives made of high carbon steel represent higher hardness, and of course, any steel with a high carbon content is prone to rust, so if you are sharpening your knife with water, make sure to wipe it down before storing it.
- Another commonly used type of knife for carving wooden gifts is high speed steel. High-speed steel has other elements added to it besides carbon, so its hardness is theoretically higher than high-carbon steel, but at the same time it is more fragile, and its toughness is poorer, so more attention should be paid to the preservation of these knives.
Summarize
In fact, this steel if the material used is real, the hardness is not particularly low, theoretically can be used for knives. But the production of unprofessional knife even if it is a good steel is not suitable for carving wooden figurines. What is an unprofessional knife? This brings us to the thickness and angle of the blade. In our next post, we will share practical experiences with various types of knives during carving to help you choose the right carving knife for making wooden gifts.
