Heat Treating Cable damascus

Hello all! Im stymied, I got some 1 1/4" improved plowshare cant twist cable, and Im not happy with the hardness. Im edge quenching in Automatic trans fluid mixed w/ desil fuel.
This has worked well for me in the past, but not now.

I water quenched a piece and it broke very crisply, just like glass, with a fine grain and texture.

I didn't anneal or normalized either piece, is this the problem?

Thanks for any help or comments!

MIke

As a rule of thumb any blade will benefit by a normalization before hardening, even if just for stress relief and a precaution against warping. From what you wrote I take it that the blade broke in the quench? If this is the case, I would note that Tranny juice and diesal fuel is a rather quick quench. Try a bit slower quenching medium, or quenching from a little lower heat, or an interrupted quench (Quenchus Interruptus ) If the blade hardened satisfactorily in the water quench, but broke afterwards......Well, You didnt mention tempering, but a fully hardened, UN tempered blade should break like glass and show a fine grain. If you tempered the hardened blade, and it broke, then it needs a higher temperature for the tempering,,

Mike,
Annealing and normalizing won't effect the hardness. Its normally done for stress relief and to stop warping. Maybe you need to use another quench, brine maybe but I'd make sure I did the normalizing going this route. Maybe you need to harden the whole blade instead of edge quenching it, the blade would look better also. I don't like the look of cable that has been edge quenched....Ray

I am assuming you quenched in cold water and broke it on purpose, right? And it hardened in water? So why not do your quench in water? Some of the 10 series steels like water and alot of cable is 10 series, up around 80 or 90 points of carbon. Heat your water up a bit, maybe 90 or 100 degrees and go for it.
Then temper, start low if you are using an oven, say around 250. File test. If super hard, bump up the oven to 300 and temper again for an hour. File test again. Etc, etc. If you are going with color bands in the forge or from a torch, I will back out.

ghostdog

Had you heated the oil, prior to quenching? In some cases, the warmer the oil, the less hardness you can achieve. Try it in oil no warmer than 120 F. If it still doesn't harden, looks like you might have to try H2O. Good luck.

Ghostdog, I just heated and quenched a cut off piece of the billet and quenched in water before I forged out the blade, I got in the habit of doing this to make sure I had high carbon stock.
Dana, the oil was @ 130 deg. Ill try it in room tempreture oil
and see if it works.

Ghostdog, would brine be better?
Also is an edge quench or full quench less stressfull on the blade? Im guessing that edege quenching would be more stressfull.

Mike

i have had pretty good luck with a triple quench on winch cable. first 2 times i quench the entire blade,last quench i only edge quench.i do this consecutiveheat dip in oil until the blade is no longer red about 2 minutes reheat repeat then edge quench hold in oil till entire blade is black and stops sizzling.about 3 or 4 minutes. i use a combo of cooking oil tranny oil and wax. i'm quessing here but its about 6 parts cooking oil 2 parts tranny oil and 2 parts wax


oak

Hey Mike, I think brine will will work faster than water and it doesn't sound safer for some steels. I use brine and water and oil. If a piece of steel won't harden for me in oil I try it in water or the brine mix. I tend to use the brine mix less because of the way I store it...it is more work for me to access it. My dog seems to like drinking it.

Personally I think an edge quench is more stressful and a soft spine that is bendable means nothing to me as far as a knife goes. But I do like to see a temper line. Oaks suggestion sounds very interesting to me.

ghostdog

Thanks guys, Ill let you know how it goes.
Mike