Bainitize anyone?

I am looking for alternatives for tempered martensite in some types of knife blades. So far I have come up with 'extreme' lower bainite which according to some papers give you a hardness of HB 600 (around 60 RC) which again is maybe enough. Has anyone practical experience wheather this works out to any useful blade? In theory you could get a more shock resistant blade with some actual ductility.

TLM

I've no experience with it, but you might also want to ask this question on some of the blade smith forums, like Ed Caffrey's.

I won't pretend to know a lot about it, but I am at least familiar with it. Lower Bainite has a structure similar to Martensite. The edge retention won't be quite as good but will the blade will be virtually indestructible.

You would probably have to use high temp salts. As you probably already know, you have to get the the steel from critical down to 400 degrees F. in "x" seconds to form Martensite. But with Lower Bainite is somewhere nearer 800 degrees F. I believe. I would think that any of your standard quench mediums would be to fast to hit Lower Bainite.

One person that I can think of right off the bat that you talk with about this is Master Smith, Charlie Ochs. I know that he has done quite a bit of work with Lower Bainite. Here a link to his website:

www.oxforge.com/

Howard Clark is a master at this too.

Is Superman somehow involved in this equation????

Interesting idea. Is there anything to read on this, hopefully on the Web?

Write 'bainite' on GOOGLE and see what you get. There is one professor at Cambridge who has some very impressive properties out of fairly simple steel with bainitizing. The only negative thing seems to be hardness and through that edge holding.

TLM

Hardness is also the other side of the toughness equation. Even if it doesn't chip, you also don't want the edge turning into a potato chip (crisp to some). Soft steel deforms easily on impact, so hardness matters.

With tensile breaking strength well over that of tempered martensite and tensile breaking strain 30 % higher I doubt you 'll get a crisp edge but as said, edge retention on a smaller scale might be problem, I haven't been able to persuade anyone to test that yet but it is on the list. I would not expect it to be 'better' but different and with a possibly useful set of properties.

TLM