1085 Vs. 1095 Sound Out!

[Fox Creek]

I am very comfortable forging , hardening, and tempering 1085, and get very good results; but have been working a bit lately with 1095/file steel. I find all "file steel" to work very similarly, although I know some folks have not had the same experience. Assuming "file steel" to appoximate 1095, I observe that A) In thin sections it tends to air harden ; B) requires very careful attention to fully anneal (a deep "normalizing usually suffices) C) it has a narrower forging range, i.e. you can't work it as cold with out cracking it. D) It hardens readily and dosen't require any extradordinary measures to get it glass hard. E) it is difficult to get it tempered just right; way easy to end up with it too hard and a chippy edge, better to go a wee bit soft than harder. A 1095 blade well forged and normalized for fine grain, tempered soft enough to work on a butchers steel (and ground THIN) is hard to best. for slcing. PRO or CON? A thin ground blade of 1095, I temper at about 425 degrees F.

PS Anytime you scale it hardening it, you have overheated it, and need to let it air cool, and start again on the hardening heat. .

[mete]

From your description [tends to air harden] you don't have 1095 but something with more alloying elements in it .O-1 will do that.As long as you have worked out the forging and heat treating preceedures the choice is yours.

[Raymond Johnson]

what was your questions. This is all statement. And for the record I too think that to many people knock 1095 If you don't like it, don't use it. I love it for what I use it for. And I don't use it for things it is not good for.
Glad to see someone else like it also. Have fun and keep an open mind.
Raymond Johnson

[Fox Creek]

I was not asking a question Ray..... I am sorry, I didnt realize this was a Q & A only forum. Actually it seemed a bit quiet here...I was inviting bladesmiths to share their own observations of the differences between 1095 and 1085. Of course, as you remarked, you have to select the steel for the purpose. I dont see that folks in general are running 1095 down, but rather admiting that it takes a bit more care in the HT to bring out the best. Mete, even 5160 will air harden somewhat in thin sections; not through harden; maybe only a surface effect, but harden nonetheless. Shucks, even getting a hole hot with a dull drill will superficially harden 1095. I suppose that is a component of work hardening to that too. If you wanted to add another standard to the comparison, it would need to be a hypoeutectoid steel like 1070. I think my friend Tai Goo uses a good bit of 1080-1070 with good results.

[Kevin R. Cashen]

I think every maker will aquire a taste for specific steels that will work well for them. This is probably due to methods fo working, tools available, and what one gets used to. We all find steels that present issues for us as well, with any luck this will not result in inviting the wrath of others, certainly hope so since I have developed a dislike for some of the most popular flavor of the month in bladesmithing steels. So I think you no doub't have every legitimate reason not to be as fond of that file steel you tried, but I would urge you to get some actual verifiable 1095 and give it try, in comparison.

When looking over the forums, or when opproached in person with requests for advice, if I notice mention of scrap steel I will usaully reserve comment and move on. If forced to guess the steel, I simply cannot give any reliable advice and I will wait to help out until the person is serious enough to have moved on to knowable materails, until then I could be hurting as much as helping. It think this is a good example that reinforces my policy. It really is impossible for anybody present to make any statements about 1095 based on the behavior of a scrap file since that file could be anything from W series to case hardened mild steel. All of the behaviors that were described, points to it NOT being 1095.

5160 should air harden in thinner sections since it is an oil hardening (deep hardening) steel, it has a good dose of chrome added to facilitate this. 1095 is one of the most, if not the most shallow hardening hypereutectoids I can think of, off hand. It would take a VERY thin section in some pretty fast moving air to get it to form anything more than really fine pearlite. I hope we are not basing the claim of "air hardening" on abrasion resistance since dead soft 1095 will dull a drill bit just as fast as fully hardened 1084 if you drill into a cementite cluster that needs to be broken up through a good normalizing.

I have worked with 1084, O1, L6 and 1095 for close to 20 years now, and my experience has been very different from what you have found in the used file steel:

A) in thin sections it has always made a great specimen to use in demos for showing how soft it can be with very little anealing effort.

B) several normalizing cycles to break up the carbides and then a single, easy lammelar anneal, or a quench and a good spheroidizing, will get this stuff dead soft.

C) I have never cracked 1095 on the anvil, it would be like cracking dough, I have cracked some by putting it into water but couldn't imagine it in the forging. Overheating and crumbling yes, definitley yes, but cracking, no.

D) It requires some of the fastest oils available to completely harden, the only thing I have noticed that is more of a hassle with 1095 than say 1084 is that one needs to quench it 1/2 second quicker to get full hardness.

E) With no extra alloy elements to get in the way 1095 is one of the easiest and quickest steels to fully temper. I have found excellent strength versus toughness after 400F. draws.

It sounds like you do know what you are doing though, so I would say we need to find out what your old file is actually made of for certain, because I am about 95% sure it is not 1095.

[Raymond Johnson]

Mr. Mize i'm sorry if I offended you. My sense of humor is not always understood. As for me I have heard many people nock this steel, and I was just tired of it.

Raymond Johnson

[J.Arthur Loose]

It doesn't sound like 1095 to me either.

In my experience 1095 forges very well (no crumbling,) doesn't come close to air hardening & is pretty shallow hardening. When I first started making damascus I used 1095 & mild steel. I had a hard time getting it to harden fully, though the edge did. I eventually figured out that the lack of manganese in 1095, coupled with enough carbon migration was making a super-shallow hardening blade. I moved to 1084 and had much better luck, because the manganese allowed a much longer quench time. For 4 or 5 years now I've pretty exclusively used 15N20 & Admiral's 1070 (basically the same as 1084, aside from a slight drop in carbon) since 1084 is hard to find, especially in the right dimensions. Many folks who enjoy their hamons like 1095, but since I'm usually interested in a homogenous hardening, I prefer something closer to 1084.

[Larrin]

I'm not sure why you'd be worried about whether a steel will air harden or not, other than determining how deep hardening a steel is, which could tell you a few things. When it comes to performance, when it comes to knives at least, the faster you can quench, the better it will be. Of course, this is a generalization.

[Fox Creek]

I apologise for not checking back sooner. Thanks Kevin for that well reasoned response. That is a great summation of the physical properties of 1095. Food for thought. Thanks J.
I was basically trying to get a thread going, but like the direction this is going. As background, I have been making a series of very simple file blades for the rustic crowd. I have seven so far, and they have all been different in the steel. Some are harder and require a higher temper, etc. but all have yielded a very sharp edge. I will say for the record, that at last after many files, I have found something that will not harden. A old yard-sale four-In-hand wood rasp. apparently case hardened mild steel. One of my favorite tools, but in this instance, a bad choice for a blade.

[Fox Creek]

Oh. no offense taken Ray. I would never put down 1095 steel. Gosh, how many billions of tons of 1095 have been consumed over the years for knives? 1095 will always a classic.

[bladsmth]

I agree with Kevin on everything he said.I also don't think you are dealing with 1095 in those files.
The main difference between 1095 and 1084 is that 1095 is hypereutectiod and 1084 is the eutectoid.This makes 1095 a slight bit higher in Ac temp.Otherwise they should work nearly the same.Quench time will be a fraction of a second faster for 1095,too.Annealed and spheroidized 1095 should not be red short.
Stacy