Hey All!
Grayorm pointed me to this thread, thanks for taking a look at the video!
Lots of questions I can see, I'll answer them each as well as I can.
First up though, the 'dremel' that I'm using is actually a super cheap (and very poor quality) store brand rotary tool. Wouldn't recommend it if I'm honest. I picked it up for $14 when I was off-site for a job and it's managed to hang around (read: not die) since then!
There were a few questions as to why I use A2 steel and kydex for my sheaths:
I decided to use A2 after I did a lot of testing with various steels, I would love to post links to the testing but my account is not enabled for that yet apparently.
The summary is that A2 is tougher, more corrosion resistant and holds an edge better than O1. It actually has performance practically identical to the toughest of the high-end powder steels CPM3V. It's MUCH tougher than any of the stainlesses that I've tried so far, though I have a new heat-treat lined up for testing with CPM154 that I expect will improve it's results quite a bit.
That huge amount of toughness that A2 has lets me take my blades to a very high hardness (62.5HRC, 800 Vickers HV), while still keeping my blades very thin (they're 0.38mm thick behind the edge). The combination of high hardness and thin geometry produces a knife that cuts easily and holds it's edge very well. Bear in mind that these knives are meant to see hard use like splitting firewood and so on, if I was making knives for say kitchen use I could go even thinner in the blade.
A2 would be a bit of unusual choice for a knife made in the UK or Europe as I believe it's much less available there, in North America it's much more common so it was a natural choice to test. Next year I'll be doing another round of steel testing comparing A2 to more of the high end powder steels like CPM3V, CPM4V, CPMS35VN, as well as some time-tested favourites like AEB-L and 1095.
As for Kydex: I'm definitely aware that kydex is less pretty than leather, however it also has much less maintenance associated with it. Moisture and varying climates pose no problems for it, and it's great for someone that uses their knife a lot as it retains the knife without need for clasps or straps. It has it's downsides, it tends to scratch blades and it's definitely not as pretty as leather, but given my current options I think it's overall the best choice for a working knife.
Regarding kydex in cold climates, I did some testing on this just recently. The result is that kydex definitely loses toughness at low temperatures (I was testing at -50ºC or lower), but you'd need to really beat on it to get it to crack/fail still. I used a hammer
I'll be investigating new options for sheath materials early next year. For instance I wasn't aware that Zytel (fibre reinforced nylon) was available in sheets the same way that Kydex is, that looks like it might be a good candidate for a wider range of service temperatures!
To be clear, you don't need anywhere near this number of tools to make knives, just the extra tools help the job go quickly and consistently. I have a number of videos on my YouTube channel that show basic jigs for filing bevels, and also simple heat-treat recipes for O1... I'll be doing some more instructional videos soon showing how to make knives with the bare minimum of tools.
Let me know if you guys have any other questions! If we can setup my account to post URLs I'll happily provide links to more detailed photos of my grinding jig and so on.
All the best,
Aaron
