Cutters?

[wormbobskey]

Can anyone tell where I can find someone in the Ohio area that can cut old saw mill saw blades into knife blanks? I have 2 of them that are about 2' in diameter by 1/8 thick,  but I have no way of cutting them. Is there anyone out there that uses lawnmower blades for knife steel? Would these be good enough to use in making tomahawks as well?
Thanks, Worm.

[Joel]

You might check in your yellow pages for someone running a small machine shop or welding operation.  They might gave a bandsaw or big chop  saw.  Depending on how old your blades are they might be L-6.  At one time all those blades were,  but newer ones are out of a steel I can't recall at the moment.  I've often wondered, casually, about lawnmower blades, but not being a forger I didn't persue the thought.  Again, I've no idea what they're made from.  Trouble with working with unknown steel, is you can sometimes have a rough time with the heat treat/temper cycle; although I guess heating to non-magnetic and then using a reasonable temperature for tempering works.  I've made knives out of files whose steel I wasn't sure of that I ground cool and then re-tempered them at 400 F  until I got the straw colour.  That worked ok.

[scherm]

From what I have read about mower blades, there are some that make decent blades and some that don't.  There's no real way to tell which are which just by looking at them.  You can do a "Spark Test" on them to judge carbon content or just Heat Treat a sample to see what you get.