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My 52100 blades start life out in my shop as ¾” or 1” round bars and they are then forged to shape from there.  Unlike many makers today, I do not give most of my 52100 blades a hard edge/soft back heat treatment. It has been assumed for years that the only way to make a knife that would be hard at the edge and tough overall was to give the blade a hard cutting edge and a soft spine. While this achieves the desired effect, it has one problem: it is too easy to bend. It will certainly never break, but it can bend under heavy use. With proper heat treating, a 10” blade that has been differentially tempered (hard edge, spring back) will bend to 90 degrees without breaking.  However, since this requires several hundred pounds of force, no one will ever bend a knife like this under normal circumstances, but what you have is a knife that is not just tough (resistant to breaking) but strong (resistant to bending). 

In a survival situation, a knife may be called upon to build a temporary shelter.  Splitting wood with a small knife is not that easy, but if you use a wool maul, you can beat on the spine of the blade and drive it through a piece of wood with ease. I used to build my 52100 knives with a soft spine. One day I was putting the roof on a shed in my backyard and I needed to cut through some 1 x 2 spaced sheeting and my saw was on the ground. I took out my knife, and using my hammer, I just beat the knife right through the board where it needed to be cut. It worked great except for one thing: the spine had dented and mushroomed because it was much softer than the face of the hammer. Since then, I have found my 52100 knives to be unbreakable, but they are never soft anywhere, and I feel that they are superior because of that.  All of my 52100 blades now have what I call a "spring" back.  It is not as hard as the edge, it is hard like a leaf spring - tough but very stiff.

In addition to 52100, I also use straight carbon steels like 1095 and W-2. I use these simple carbon steels for blades with a traditional looking Japanese style clay hardening line.  You will often see this referred to as a "temper line" or "hamon".  Since the line is a result of the hardening process, not a the tempering process, I don't like calling it a "temper line."  And, "hamon" is a Japanese word that most Westerners mispronounce badly.  Since I'm not Japanese, and I don't want to make hamburger out of the pronunciation, I'll just stick with "hardening line" because it's the most accurate of the three.  A blade with an active hardening line with its hard edge and softer back, is not only beautiful but was done over the years to give a simple steel the ability to cut very well but still have enough toughness in the soft spine to keep it from breaking. In the chaos of a battlefield, the last thing you want is to find yourself standing there with only a handle in your hand.  Most of my knives built like this still do not really have a "soft" back, but a spring back, similar to the 52100 and O-1 blades.  Another reason I make blades with the clay hardening lines is that like a fingerprint, no two blades will ever have the same line. No matter how much I may want to, I could never duplicate a hardening line exactly.

There is a reason I have settled on 52100, O-1 and W-2 as my primary steels.  The 52100 or O-1 hardened all the way through gives the blade a very clean appearance.  Also, because of the addition of some chrome to the steel, I mirror polish the spines of these blades, and they present themselves with a very clean look.  W-2 on the other hand, is differentially hardened and shows a wonderful, active hardening line.  However, from a performance standpoint, the steels are almost identical.  (In fact, look at my Performance Testing page for reviews of these steels.)  Because their performance is essentially the same, I recommend that you buy what you like the look of the best, and know that you are not sacrificing anything in the cutting department to get what you like.

Although I do use O-1 on several different types of knives, I use it exclusively on my "Blue Collar Knives."  This type of knife will do all most people expect, but cost less due to the simpler construction and finishing requirements.  If you doubt what these little knives will do, see me performance testing page, or do a www.bladeforums.com search to read what my customers have to say about them. 

One of the advantage of forging blades and working with carbon steels, is that the steel's performance can be "pushed" beyond what it would otherwise be capable of through grain refinement and differential heat treatment.  On paper, many of the high tech stainless steels should out cut a simple steel like W-2, and if both were made by stock removal, the stainless knife would probably win.  However, with proper forging and heat treating, not only will the W-2 blade cut longer than the stainless blade, it will be much, much stronger, and it will be easier to sharpen, especially in the field.  It is important to remember that all knives will need to be sharpened eventually.  But if you need a special sharpening system or a jig or a power sharpener, that does you little good if you take the knife on a long trip and can't lug all this stuff with you.  I have converted many people to carbon steel and my knives in particular because they find that for the first time in their life, they can sharpen a knife to razor sharpness with only a small $5 stone.

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