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Old 08-07-2019, 04:12 PM
jimmontg jimmontg is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2016
Location: Now live in Las Cruces NM.
Posts: 1,345
L6 is indeed an alloy.

It has 1.75 nickel, .75 carbon, .90 chrome, .35 molybdenum and .75 manganese. L6 has enough nickel to use for making Damascus. I did not know you didn't know how to anneal. As Doug Lester said that is best done in a controlled oven. I used to do it in a smaller forge my brother and I made mostly just for annealing, but the forge must be able to be closed off on both ends. As Doug said best to normalize.

But in case you wanted to know how we annealed in the forge is we would heat the forge until the wall was glowing brightly. Then we would put the blades in we wanted to anneal, heat to nonmagnetic then close the door and shut off the forge. It took 24 hours to cool down from the extra thick walls and door. Perfect anneal every time. We mostly used it for old Nicholson files we found a huge stash of.

1700 isn't the best temp, 1650 is if you are air quenching L6, but I just gave you that process to see if it would air quench at all. To my way of thinking there are so many more and better steels than 1080 to use and L6 like O1 forge or oven I would use those instead, but the caveat is that they are more expensive, but I don't care because they are easier to ht and are better, especially L6, but just try and find it in thin sizes. Old saw blades are one possible source. Here is a link to L6 and it properties and ht.

http://http://cintool.com/documents/...rdening/L6.pdf
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