Swivel Knife Blades

[kk1992]

could you make a swivel knifeblade out of piece of diamond tipped saw blade? seems to me with diamond you'd nbever haves to do anything to the blade to keep it sharp

[dirtclod]

All of the diamond saw blades i have ever used were pretty thick. The metal wouldn't be to hard to cut but what are ya going to cut the diamond with ?

[TwinOaks]

Some while back (and you can still find them on Ebay) all the rage was ruby blades- there was a man- made ruby as the cutting edge. Now, they aren't the rage anymore because swivel knives occasionally get dropped, bumped into other things, etc., and that can chip the ruby. Yes, diamond is harder than ruby, but it's also potentially going to chip like the ruby blades did. I suppose that if you could talk to the guy doing PVD (plasma vapor deposit) you could get very thin manufactured diamond, but it just isn't practical. There's been so much advancement in metalurgy and ceramics in the last few decades that trying to develop a diamond edged blade would be impractical at best and prohibitively expensive. Now, there's the discussion of proper blade geometry for a swivel knife- and there is more than one way to do things. Personally, I like a thin, acute edge for thicker leather and a wider edge for thin leather. You can see where this starts to get complicated......

Grab yourself a decent knife to learn with and when you out perform the knife, upgrade to a really nice one-----or just get the nice one to start with if you've got an extra $150. I'm using the same blades I got when I 'inherited' my dad's leather working kit. Read the info here on how to sharpen and STROP the blade and your grand kids will likely use it someday. Properly sharpened, the blade will seldom need more than a quick trip to the strop (just to polish it a bit).