Steel balls? You better have titanium balls with a carbide coating for some of those stunts.
*promote *quality old school danger

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Carbide (what I think the knife is made from) is tough stuff, and easily cuts through unhardened steel. That's why they make tools for steel milling and rock mining out of it.
I'm not sure why one would need a knife that tough, but good to know someone makes them. It's probably incredibly difficult to sharpen.
I want to see an entire katana made out of it. I wonder how well that would work, or if it might be too stiff.

I work in a CNC machine shop programming lathes. That isn't aluminum they are machining. It's definitely steel, probably 4340.

Carbide inserts are more than capable of cutting metal without coolant. Well formed chips absorb and carry most of the heat away. You start to run into problems with gummy materials (like aluminum) that form a built up edge on the cutter. In this case high pressure coolant can be used to help break the long stringy chips and keep them from sticking to the insert.

One case where using coolant can be detrimental to tool life is when machining a part with an interrupted cut. Think of sliding your finger over a surface with a bunch of holes in it. Your finger switches back and forth between making contact with the surface and gliding over empty space. In the machining world, this motion would cause abrupt transient temperature changes, and coolant can sometimes exacerbate the problem and cause the carbide insert to crack or chip.

(pedantry) I would hesitate to call that machine a mill. You can see the machine switching freely between rotating the part to provide the cutting force (turning) to rotating the tool (milling). It's more akin to a horizontal turning center with a milling spindle built in as well. Pretty awesome stuff! (/pedantry)

Calcium Carbide + H20 makes Acetylene gas, which is lit by a torch. You can find hundreds of videos of people doing this on youtube. Would be easier to do for real than to fake.

I think it's difficult to dispute that you weren't arguing against free trade in your previous post even if that wasn't your intention. The first paragraph seems clearly about it when you talk about being up in arms about your job going overseas, and I think in the second you misunderstand how capitalism works. But anyway, I don't think that we disagree on a great deal then. Like I stated in my original post, I believe in necessary government regulation and oversight in a capitalist economy, preventing deterimental effects like market failure, and financial, environmental or other crises.
>> ^Asmo:

>> ^RedSky:
Well, at this point you're simply arguing against free trade.
Would I be infuriated to lose a job because a firm has chosen to use cheaper labour from overseas? Sure. I go about preventing this from happening by studying about and working in an area that requires technical knowledge that cannot be easily substituted. As a comparison, would you be for sticking to old technologies purely because there are workers only trained in them? Should be have avoided embracing computation simply because previous generations were unfamiliar with them and stuck to letters and typewriters? Obviously given that these factors are mostly out of people's control, specific and unemployment assistance should be and is provided in most highly developed countries. The countries which don't have generous unemployment benefits are usually the ones that simply can't afford them. Typically though, they're the biggest relative beneficiaries of free trade though.
The better question should be, are willing up to give up the drastically lower prices, product variety and willing to scare of businesses who bring employment? Because you can bet that if you restrict companies from laying off workers in favor of cheaper employment overseas, they'll move overseas in droves to countries which do not and you'll have created a self fulfilling prophecy.
Free trade works two ways as well, which people seem to blissfully forget. Where do you think developing countries go to get their technical expertise?
Free trade leads to lower prices not higher profits. When all firms lower their wage costs, this creates the incentive to lower prices and capture more market share. Once one company in an industry does that, everyone follows suit. If that doesn't happen, it's a failure of competition policy and anti-trust and has nothing to do with free trade.
No offence, but I honestly think you should take Economics 101, or at least Wikipedia the basic concepts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand


None taken, but you've become so impressed with your own rhetoric (and wandered off in to free trade) that you've ignored the key element...
Exploitation. Foreign outsourcing was an example of 'free' trade (rather than 'fair' trade). But exploitation wears many coats. Usury rates on credit cards combined with stagnant wages, for example. Or sub prime mortgages for another. Destroying the environment to squeeze the last few drops of resources out.
And this is the core of the penultimate capitalist ideal (as opposed to individual flavours). Accumulate wealth. The more corners you cut, the faster you can accumulate wealth. Then you die and someone else get's it. Yay, you win.
Regulation, fair trade, competition laws etc are all ideals forced upon capitalists because people generally recognise that capitalism without checks = a disaster (BP + gulf, Union Carbide/Bhopal disaster etc). There is nothing wrong with working and expecting fair recompense for your labours but too often these labours aren't honest. They game the system and exploit (there's that word again) not only the workers but the customers as well so the man in the middle can make as much cash as possible.
ps. For the record, I don't have an issue with fair trade and the commensurate rise in prices if quality rises with it. That's the whole point of fair trade, not increasing wages for sweatshop quality.

>> ^RedSky:

Well, at this point you're simply arguing against free trade.
Would I be infuriated to lose a job because a firm has chosen to use cheaper labour from overseas? Sure. I go about preventing this from happening by studying about and working in an area that requires technical knowledge that cannot be easily substituted. As a comparison, would you be for sticking to old technologies purely because there are workers only trained in them? Should be have avoided embracing computation simply because previous generations were unfamiliar with them and stuck to letters and typewriters? Obviously given that these factors are mostly out of people's control, specific and unemployment assistance should be and is provided in most highly developed countries. The countries which don't have generous unemployment benefits are usually the ones that simply can't afford them. Typically though, they're the biggest relative beneficiaries of free trade though.
The better question should be, are willing up to give up the drastically lower prices, product variety and willing to scare of businesses who bring employment? Because you can bet that if you restrict companies from laying off workers in favor of cheaper employment overseas, they'll move overseas in droves to countries which do not and you'll have created a self fulfilling prophecy.
Free trade works two ways as well, which people seem to blissfully forget. Where do you think developing countries go to get their technical expertise?
Free trade leads to lower prices not higher profits. When all firms lower their wage costs, this creates the incentive to lower prices and capture more market share. Once one company in an industry does that, everyone follows suit. If that doesn't happen, it's a failure of competition policy and anti-trust and has nothing to do with free trade.
No offence, but I honestly think you should take Economics 101, or at least Wikipedia the basic concepts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand



None taken, but you've become so impressed with your own rhetoric (and wandered off in to free trade) that you've ignored the key element...

Exploitation. Foreign outsourcing was an example of 'free' trade (rather than 'fair' trade). But exploitation wears many coats. Usury rates on credit cards combined with stagnant wages, for example. Or sub prime mortgages for another. Destroying the environment to squeeze the last few drops of resources out.

And this is the core of the penultimate capitalist ideal (as opposed to individual flavours). Accumulate wealth. The more corners you cut, the faster you can accumulate wealth. Then you die and someone else get's it. Yay, you win.

Regulation, fair trade, competition laws etc are all ideals forced upon capitalists because people generally recognise that capitalism without checks = a disaster (BP + gulf, Union Carbide/Bhopal disaster etc). There is nothing wrong with working and expecting fair recompense for your labours but too often these labours aren't honest. They game the system and exploit (there's that word again) not only the workers but the customers as well so the man in the middle can make as much cash as possible.

ps. For the record, I don't have an issue with fair trade and the commensurate rise in prices if quality rises with it. That's the whole point of fair trade, not increasing wages for sweatshop quality.

I'm sorry, but who wants animal skin for their car???

Hey Bob, What should we make the car out of?
How about Steel Carl? No
Graphite? No
Kevlar? No
Aluminum? No
Metal Carbide Powder and a Multi-element High-entropy Alloy Powder (here)

Leather? oh, hey, that a solid idea! Screw technology... (bla, bla, bla...)

I don't think land property rights extend to businesses caring for the land they possess. Look at Union Carbide or the chemical spill offs of the early 90s.

At the end it was social action of the populace that started holding businesses accountable.

>> ^MaxWilder:

Property rights make sense on land, because a disaster on your own property has a smaller chance of spreading to the entire region. Yeah, there is still some risk, but it's much lower. In the ocean, anything that goes wrong will have very far reaching repercussions.

Yeah our professor is kind of hard on people who come into the program who only want to be bladesmiths. Not only because it's a fine art program but he also stresses over an over how hard it is to make it as a bladesmith. Knives are hard work! Personally, it took me FOREVER to forge and finish them.

In reply to this comment by Sagemind:
I have made many custom decorative knives. (though haven't in a while)

I got my steel from the huge carbide blades used by the mills.
I drew out my pattern, and cut out the shape using a cutting torch.
Then it was grinding, wet-sanding and polishing. I used 3/8-1/2" thick brass plate to decorate the handle and then finish with bone or exotic woods. Brass welding rod, cut and used as a rivet, held the handle together. Then more polishing, and then some more, sharpen it up and you got a knife.

I gave every single one I made, including a great dagger, away as gifts. I only ever kept one of them. A 10" hunting knife with a deer antler handle. It has a great pattern on the blade but it was more functional than decorative.

100s of hours of work and nothing to show for it...

Edit: I didn't forge my own steel - though who wouldn't want to get into that - this guy is so lucky to have made a career of it!

I have made many custom decorative knives. (though haven't in a while)

I got my steel from the huge carbide blades used by the mills.
I drew out my pattern, and cut out the shape using a cutting torch.
Then it was grinding, wet-sanding and polishing. I used 3/8-1/2" thick brass plate to decorate the handle and then finish with bone or exotic woods. Brass welding rod, cut and used as a rivet, held the handle together. Then more polishing, and then some more, sharpen it up and you got a knife.

I gave every single one I made, including a great dagger, away as gifts. I only ever kept one of them. A 10" hunting knife with a deer antler handle. It has a great pattern on the blade but it was more functional than decorative.

100s of hours of work and nothing to show for it...

Edit: I didn't forge my own steel - though who wouldn't want to get into that - this guy is so lucky to have made a career of it!

>> ^Stormsinger:
Fictitious? What fuckin' world have -you- been living in?
Union Carbide, Blackwater, Monsanto, Big Tobacco, Enron, Worldcom...just to name a few of the bigger evildoers out there. There are, of course, literally thousands of other examples.

I was referring to Google. That list is insignificant compared to the sheer amount of evildoing big governments have perpetrated throughout human history.

And please don't conveniently forget to mention which of these companies had ties to government.

>> ^gtjwkq:
I guess social liberals are more likely to fear the ficticious evil of big companies than the actual evil of big governments.


Fictitious? What fuckin' world have -you- been living in?

Union Carbide, Blackwater, Monsanto, Big Tobacco, Enron, Worldcom...just to name a few of the bigger evildoers out there. There are, of course, literally thousands of other examples.

Ill quote it again.

"There is no democracy there is no america, there is only ITT, IBM, Union Carbide, DuPont, and Exxon." - Network 1976

He needs some string of surgical steel filament and some diamond/carbide yo-yo's with little centripetal-activated blades....he could get a bodyguard job with some Yakuza....