OK, it’s not really insanity, but I thought about it after the last couple of posts where we’re actually talking about steel and i’m off of the annoyance with the forums and such. That’s generally in the past and a short dose of posting on forums will remind me about the lack of depth there.
Especially after reading something like Steve Voigt’s excellent blog posts on retracing steps in manually “washing” oils and things of the like for making varnishes. Something I’ve dabbled in only lightly, and is yet another thing we can do by hand, albeit making varnish in a house would be asking to stand and watch the house burn, so be careful if you get into that.
There’s this whole world of little details out there, and if you get away from thinking you need to make this or that joint, you’ll probably also find something you really like and will put the time in to learn and then share. Even if you have TMI as I do, the people who are actually interested in it will sift through what you put out and find the valuable stuff.
I would never have guessed that I would be doing anything outside of heating O1 steel, or guessing at hardness based on alloy, or separately by feel.
But the CR60V question is just general curiosity. There is a weird dynamic of steels that are used in common tools vs. stuff that is sold as precision ground stock for a whole number of purposes (like O1) or specialty knife steels that are used in boutique quantity, and by individuals, but not commonly turned out in 100,000 units a month.
CRV60 – there, I’ll just put the numbers in any order from now on – seems to be everywhere, cost almost nothing and the fact that it turns out well, at least within spec suggests that there’s something that makes it easy to use. Is that valuable to us? Probably not, but it’s part of understanding how things work.
I don’t have the interest in trying to find little bits here and there only to write about so as to build some kind of following – plenty of other people can do that and be smiley all the time and pretend they’re not full of questions.
As time goes on, since I own the site and thus the decorum, I’ll think about putting up some summary things. Such as basic steel discussion. What are carbides – you probably know what they are, but a small definition of them (combinations of carbon and other elements forming a ceramic) could be useful. If someone isn’t interested in carbides, they can just drive their car by.
I don’t expect the pondering to have any long term value other than what shakes out of it. Something might.
Of Making by Hand with Wood and Steel 
To be honest I probably have no practical use of about 90% of what you write about steel. I still like reading it though. And the last 10% can be very useful, if only by helping me understand why tools are made like they are. So insanity is the wrong word really, enthusiasm is really the appropriate word.
I boight some real big old Öberg (more than 300mm long, at least 4-5mm) files at a local second hand store for the equivalent of 2-3 dollars today. I really don’t need any more files. But these were larger than what you usually find, and I found myself thinking that I they are too dull I can always try making them in to chisels. It doesn’t seem impossible when I look at your videos. Worst case is that i wnd up with some ugly chisels or some scrap metal.
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Files are very similar to 1.25% carbon steel. I switched to 26c3 only because it became hard to get a steady supply of files thick enough to make chisels, but I can’t see much difference (or really any at all) between chisels made with good files and chisels made of 26c3.
If they’re too dull for steel, they’re probably usable on wood for a while. It’s nice to replace operations where you’d do tedious sanding with at least filing first (after rasping, etc).
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My point being that enthusiasm and investigating things is really the point of all good hobbyister and amateur blogs, forums, newsletters etc. There are probably other readers who will find some other 10% percent useful than I do. And there might be another 10% that is useful to someone else. And so on.
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Agree. The abundance of curated and refined entertainment, which is usually veiled advertising or some kind of hope to grow viewership – that abundance creates the idea for a fairly vocal group that all of the musings should be done in private and only the public results and marching (or buying) orders provided.
I get that. When I wanted to try varnish making, I just wanted a recipe to follow and I found a site with that. But there is far more to varnish making and at least a couple of people are delving into it and talking about it publicly. My first varnish worked well – it’s almost clear. What if I want harder or softer varnish or colored (turns out you can use pigment or you can manipulate the oil itself to take on color).
As soon as I get initial success, I want that kind of information. I don’t care how much patty I have to pick through to find the corn. If 2 or 200 people will read here, either is fine. If zero did, I would probably still use it as a deposit box to keep media and my thoughts about various things to refer back to. There will never be a shortage of the blogs that are aiming people at the next wallet splitting topic.
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