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Old 10-05-2017, 01:21 AM
epicfail48 epicfail48 is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2017
Location: Springfield Mo
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Quote:
Originally Posted by danjmath View Post
As for Parks 50, I have been agonizing over the $150 for 5 gallons of it shipped here, or investing that $150 into a better belt grinder than my HF 1x30 PoC. Open for advice on which to get first.
Depends, do you plan on doing a lot of work with shallow hardening steels like 1095? Or hamon work, for that matter. If you do, get the oil first. You can make knives with the grinder you have now, its just slower, but if you cant heat-treat them you're kinda boned. Now, I'm not saying that parks is the only way to quench the faster steels, but I will say that I think its the best. Its right up there with water in terms of quench speed, so the blades will actually harden, but I've yet to have a blade crack or snap in the parks. If you want to see a grown man sob, ask me about the blades I've lost to a brine quench...

Of course, the Parks is only a necessity, in my opinion at least, for the steels that require fast quenches like the mentioned 1095, w1/2 and the like. Steels like 1084 or O1 don't require as fast a quench, so Parks would be overkill for those. Warm peanut or canola oil make a great quenchant for those. Of course, warm peanut or canola oil can work for 1095 as well, but you have to be extremely careful about oil temperature. How careful? Well, 120f oil will harden knife blade thicknesses, 80-90 will fail to harden. Old oil will fail to harden. And have you ever tried heating 3 gallons of oil to 120f? Pain in the bloody neck, that. Parks 50 has a working temp range of 60-180f, if memory serves, and I've never had a blade fail to harden in it

And for what its worth, unless you're going for something that requires 1095, like hamon work, 1084 may be the better pick. Performance of the blades will be near identical, but the easier heat-treatment of the 1084 makes it a lot easier to work with.
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