Home Forums Gear Knives and Blades Weathered Elk & M390

Have a pard up in Wyoming that had a bunch of elk sheds and so forth and he gave me several and I cut up a few pieces and here's the first attempt. kinda pleased with the outcome. Really been wanting to give M390 steel a try and this was an excuse to try the steel out as well. Will hopefully be trying it out this weekend.

Dale

Dale
I love weathered elk and mule deer antler.
That is a pretty cool shape and overall look.
The spine profile is neat. Is that notching in the curve?
What is M390 similar too? What do you heat treat it to?
Tim

Looks pretty flippin' good...! That design looks like a very useable tool for field use.

Dale, I like the 'harpoon' look. Very handsome.

Tim,

Yeah, the spine is Jimped in the curve. took a little playing with a file to get that to work.

M390 is a pretty high end Bohler Uddeholm micro particle gen 3 steel. I would say it is probably about equiv. to S90V as far as cutting, however it doesn't seem as difficult to sharpen, although I've sort of lost sight of which are hard to sharpen and which aren't . The heat treat is fairly high running up about 2150ish at peak with a couple of stress relieving stages. (Basically identical to elmax) Fairly involved temper process with 3 separate stages and multiple cryo steps involved.

Then end result appears to be rather incredible from what I can tell. I've found nothing that comes close to elmax for general purpose - "average guy" knife steel and from my reading M390 is probably a little to difficult to sharpen for the average guy, but I was surprised to see that this took an edge fairly easily. (Sampling of 1 of course) It has a ton of chromium in the content so it is extremely stain resistant. It isn't supposed to be quite as tough as Elmax, but will hold an edge a bit longer. We'll see how it behaves, but it sure does sharpen up to a razor's edge. It has that buttery feel that I like when sharpening that just felt exactly right. Now to see how it holds up.

I like that one! the Elk scales realy nice!

I've bought a few elk handled knives because of the looks and I like to elk hunt. That's 2 reasons to buy another knife. This one looks quite nice. Congrats on your design and choice.
Let me know when you have one for sale.

thanks guys. appreciate all the comments. My wife says this may be the prettiest knife I've built and considering how many I've done that's sayin' a lot. She's trying to take ownership, so it may become hers before its all done. I've got a bit more elk horn although I haven't processed it and its a lot of work, but the end result is certainly worth the effort. Headed to the hills to see if I can put a little mileage on it this evening.

Dale

Good luck to you , get it dirty!!!!

Wow! I really like that! Nice job.

Oh god damn er, I want one....

Beautiful work there.

Looks amazing ! I'd love to have a knife that looked that good !