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The Newbies Arena Are you new to knife making? Here is all the help you will need. |
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#1
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I probably did a no no
I heated 1095 to non magnetic a quenched it in oil. A little more than 3 seconds to my new (to me) holder. which easily took two gallons of new veg oil. With no Parks 50 in my immediate future (xmas is just on the horizon), I made an executive decision to do it to see what it would do, despite knowing better. I did run a file over it and it brushed off with the usual sound of hardened agaist hardened.
That blank has been sitting on my bench since I won it over a month ago and I wasn't going to do it........but it seemed to be teasing me................lol Last edited by Hurley; 11-22-2013 at 07:50 PM. |
#2
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Not necessarily. It will depend on how much manganese is in the steel. Skating a file across the blade is a good sign. I hope that you have gone ahead and tempered the blade as it could be under a lot of stress if you haven't.
By the way, how long did you let the blade soak before you quenched it. The carbides in 1095 are mainly cementite but they do require a bit of a soak to get adequate carbon into solution. This is where a regulated heat source comes in handy. It will allow a soak at temperature without running the risk of growing the grain or creating a lot of retained austinite. Doug __________________ If you're not making mistakes then you're not trying hard enough |
#3
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I used about a gallon of water with a LOT of salt dissolved in it and it worked great.
__________________ Walt |
#4
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getting ready to temper it now........had to do some honey-do's first........soak? This is the first piece of 1095 I've used it was already cut into a blank, I just HT'ed it and now I'm tempering ( on Friday night I lead a boring life I know). I didn't know anything about the soaking, did I ruin the blade?
As an added bonus, my girl is shaking her head and laughing at me saying, "You didn't think knifemaking was going to be easy did you?" Well no, I didn't, but I didn't think there would be this much trial and error!.........lol Good thing she is supportive, she might get me a forge for xmas too! Yeah, she's a keeper! Last edited by Hurley; 11-22-2013 at 10:58 PM. |
#5
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"Ruined" is such a relative term. Lots of guys use HT techniques that don't produce the results I would want but they seem happy with them. Knife making does require lots of trial and error if you do it right....and testing too. Lots of testing. So, the blade probably isn't 'ruined' but it also probably hasn't reached its full potential either.
The more alloyed the steel is the more soak time is required. This is why we don't recommend steels like O1 to guys who use forges for HTing. 1095 barely makes it into the alloyed category but it does like a soak. Soaking is difficult to do with a forge, nearly impossible in fact without a lot of practice or, as I like to call it, 'trial and error'. Yeah, you should keep that girl. Any chance she owns a 4WD and can gut a fish? That would be a real bonus .... |
#6
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No she doesn't own a 4wd, but she scales fish leaves the gutting to someone else. But she can cook like nobody's buisness!
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#7
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You really should have everything ready to temper a blade right after quenching. Quenching will put the iron crystals under a lost of stress, especially the high carbon steels. You could have a blade break just sitting on the work bench too long. Ideally the blade should be allowed to cool to just warm to the touch and then put into the tempering oven for at least one cycle.
Doug __________________ If you're not making mistakes then you're not trying hard enough |
#8
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I got to meet her, Ray. There's no explanation for the company she keeps.
As said above, can't diddle around with the higher carbon steels. If you don't think you have time to draw the temper, don't do the quench. __________________ Carl Rechsteiner, Bladesmith Georgia Custom Knifemakers Guild, Charter Member Knifemakers Guild, voting member Registered Master Artist - GA Council for the Arts C Rex Custom Knives Blade Show Table 6-H |
#9
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LOL............ok Carl.......I can't explain it either! Must be the Ugandian love curse I put on her, she's outta my leauge!
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#10
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I can relate to the temptation Hurley. HT is one of my two favorite things to do in knifemaking. It was number one until I got to etch a hamon blade. I couldn't put the blade down until I finally wrapped it in paper towel and electrical tape. HT does seem like the moment of truth for all the effort up to that point.
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#11
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Ill reiterate what Carl said... Heat treating is a multi-step process, not just one (the quench), both steps (or 3 if you do a cryo) are equally important, they need to be done at the same time. I wont even consider heat treating anything unless I have an hour for the heat-quench process and 3-4 hours after that I will atleast be around to tend to the temper process.
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#12
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It amazes me how much heat treating cycles have changed in the last 25 years. I remember when I started out everyone was saying to use simple carbon steels with forges so you could harden them correctly....now they are saying to hold them at temp for a short time. Years ago that was a no-no with 1095. Heck, I've even successfully tempered 440c stainless in my whisper lowboy. And, it worked. Was it the optimum? Probably not, but it does make a very servicable blade.
I remember reading how in ancient times they used slaves to quench the blade in. Yep, got it cherry red and quenched it in their guts. Supposed to make it some type of super steel that way. I've also heard of quenching in urine, bull blood, and many other things. Heat treating and tempering steel is like everything else with knifemaking. Do what works for you. Everything else is guidelines but not necessarily the holy grail either. The most important thing is to test your blades for the quality YOU are looking for. If you are looking for a blade that will bend before breaking, have a hamon line, yadayadayada, then by all means test and adjust your process for that. If all you are looking for is a blade to cut and hold an edge well, adjust for that. All ways can be proper for the properties you may be looking for in a knife. I hope I haven't made too many people upset by this post since I rarely post here anymore, but I do get tired of people saying it should only be done a certain way when they omit the fact of what they are looking for in the properties of their blades when it may be totally different than what someone else is searching for. I'm editing this to add this. I have a friend that makes knives and his idea of a top quality in a knife is if it will cut a bolt. Now, understand, part of his ability to cut bolts is due to proper heat treating, but more of it is due to him using a very very convex edge, as in axe quality convex edge. If he were to put a hollow grind or even a flat grind on his knives they wouldn't be as apt to cut a bolt. Edge geometry is at play in this case. Basically he is making a long chisel instead of a knife. Again, it is all in what you are looking for and there are more things at play then just heat treating. I'll shut up now. __________________ God Bless! Craig Blankenship Booger County Outfitters LLC. D.B.A Craig's Outdoor Sports Knifemaker and Gunsmith Last edited by Craig B.; 11-25-2013 at 10:07 AM. |
#13
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I agree in large part with Craig's comments. Where I take a slightly different view is to say that 'back in the day' we didn't know nearly as much about metallurgy as is known today so, naturally, a lot of the details have changed in how we heat treat our blades. While I believe it is true that you should adjust the heat treatment to the intended purpose of the blade a more modern view is that most of that adjustment is done during the tempering cycles. By 'tempering cycles' I include differential hardening, clay quenching, drawing the spine, and such techniques intended to modify a portion of the blade from reaching full hardness. Aside from that, there is, to a great extent, only one way to heat treat any given steel to its optimum crystalline structure. The structure is then modified by whatever tempering process you need to get the type of performance you want from your blade and that blade will be about as good as it is possible to make for your purpose with that steel. Most alloyed steels will favor toughness/hardness/wear resistance by varying the pre-quench temperature by a very slight amount (less than 200 degrees usually) but that's about as far as you can go with tuning the steel before tempering. That's still a lot of ifs and variance but the point is that there is a difference in how you reach the goal you set for your blades.
I've ignored salt pots and other such advanced processes only because they are not available to most of us. The use of such tools doesn't change anything I said earlier but it does allow the user to freeze the crystalline structure at places our more mundane processes cannot achieve. Even so, the process still begins with achieving as complete a transformation as possible within some very narrow limits. Craig is talking about simply making a serviceable blade and that's a worthy goal. Truly, any chunk of steel that will harden at all can be heated and processed almost any way at all and have a good chance of making a serviceable blade. A chunk of stainless in a forge will definitely produce a serviceable blade. But, that sort of thing isn't the goal of most of the people on this forum. Matching the correct heat treatment characteristics with the edge geometry (as Craig pointed out) is what we all should be trying to do.... |
#14
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Ray, me and you are saying the same thing and I agree with you 100%.
Let me say just one thing. If we were to have 4 different makers on this forum make 4 different knives from the same bar of steel that was say 72" in length cut appropriately for said knives and each knife was made to the same guidlines with the same heat treating process in each maker's home shop,what would happen? You would more than likely have 4 blades of differing quality. Why? Especially when they were made the same with the same heat treat process? It will be due to the fact that unless you are controlling all the variables in a lab type setting you will have way to many of said variables to get the exact same results. And that is exactly why everyone says to test your blades. It is due to each of us having different variables in our respective shops which will produce different results, even if those results are very small. So, that is why I always recommend anyone to take someone else's, including my own, advice on heat treating not as the end all on how it should be done, but as a way to guide you on your journey to reach the results you are looking for. You may have to tweak the advice you are receiving a little to get the results you want in your shop. That's what makes this hobby so rewarding. When you reach the goal you are trying to achieve it may be with the help of other maker's but with your own personal twist on it. As long as you are getting the results you have set out to achieve, you are a success. Even if the results don't match up with what another maker is looking for with their own results. __________________ God Bless! Craig Blankenship Booger County Outfitters LLC. D.B.A Craig's Outdoor Sports Knifemaker and Gunsmith |
#15
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Again, I agree. My focus is always on the newbies, especially first time (or few time) makers who are looking around trying to figure out "how to do it". That's why I want to stress what you explained further in your second post and that is that there is definitely a specific process to heat treating a blade and that it varies by which steel and the intended purpose of the knife and that without a serious attempt at control of the process the results will be hit or miss. It is so easy for the newbs to read something like "heat until the steel is non-magnetic" and assume that any temperature beyond that must be OK too. I answer so many posts and emails every day from guys wanting to know what steel this thing they found is made of and can it make a good knife that I am very gun shy about assuming anything where a newbs knowledge is concerned. So, I tend to err to the other direction of beating everyone about the head and shoulders when they might say anything that I think might be ambiguous to a newb and create a wrong impression in their minds about heat treating because, unfortunately, many will simply take any little comment as if it were the whole story and look no further. Hopefully, between the two of us, we have done a fair job of avoiding over simplification without needlessly complicating the matter....
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1095, bee, blade, edge, electrical, etch, file, forge, hamon, heat, heat treat, iron, knife, knife making, knifemaking, knives, made, making, post, quenched, scales, simple, steel, temper |
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