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Heat Treating and Metallurgy Discussion of heat treatment and metallurgy in knife making.

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  #1  
Old 04-17-2013, 06:20 PM
imajalapeno imajalapeno is offline
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New to heat treating

Okay so I want to heat treat my first knife( whenever I make it) I don't want to send it out cause I wanna try it, is there a simple way to understand heat treating?? And what is the easiest steel to start with?? I'm just a bit confused about this.. I would try the search bar but my iPod keeps closing it. Please help, thank you
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Old 04-17-2013, 07:59 PM
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Naboyle Naboyle is offline
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1084, get it just above non magnetic, quench in oil, put in oven, cook at 400deg for 2 hours, twice. Done. My iPhone does the same thing on the search. Push search, type the first letter of whatever you wanna search, after it disappears push search again and finish typing whatever it is your searching for. Type 1084 heat treat into google. There's so much info out there you'll get tired of reading about it.

Last edited by Naboyle; 04-17-2013 at 08:01 PM.
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Old 04-17-2013, 10:35 PM
Doug Lester Doug Lester is offline
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Go to Knifedogs.com and go to their heat treating board under the shop grouping and Kevin Cashen has a sticky posted that will tell you everything that you need to know about heat treating until you're ready to really hit the books. As Naboyle stated, 1084 from The New Jersey Steel Baron is great to start out with. So it the 1080 from Alpha Knife Supply. Something like 5160 is also pretty forgiving. For now, I would avoid 1095, 52100, CruForgeV, or the W series of steels. They are good steels, just not to start with, especially with a simple gas forge or a torch. Complex tool steels like A2 or D2, and stainless steels need a regulated heat source or they need to be sent to someone who has the equipment to treat it.

Doug

Heat treating can be simple or a pain in the neck, or somewhere south of there. It all depends on the alloy that you choose and how the forge gremlins are feeling that day.


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Old 04-18-2013, 06:02 PM
imajalapeno imajalapeno is offline
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Okay so I gathered some info off the web..this is just hardening,someone said most steel comes annealed??? Anyways,will the forge that is mentioned work for now?? Thank you


Heat to 1475F to 1500F (steel type depending) until the metal is just past non-magnetic. Non-magnetic is around 1425F. A propane (or MAPP gas) torch played evenly along the blade will get the job done. Try to get the heat color evenly across the blade. You don?t need to harden the entire knife blank. Just the blade is good enough. Don?t worry about hardening the handle. It will never cut anything and it will be more than hard enough for use as a handle. Still, you can if you want to. Alternatively, you can make a poor man?s forge in charcoal BBQ grill using a hair dryer to fan the charcoals hot enough. This is amazingly easy. Pile up some charcoal in your BBQ and get them going good. Aim your hair dryer at the charcoal and turn it on. See how hot the coals get from the blower on the hair dryer. Some guys will take a pipe and put one buried in the charcoal and duct tape the other end to their hair dryer. This forces air up through the charcoal and is pretty close to genuine blacksmith forge. Put your knife in the pile of charcoal and heat it up. It won?t take very long at all. These steels doesn?t need a long soak time. A couple minutes is enough. In practice, you heat the blade and keep touching a magnet to the blade. When the magnet doesn?t stick any more, give it a minute more of heat and then quickly plunge the blade into your quench oil. Fire will flare up where the hot blade meets the surface of the oil. Be ready for that. You should slowly agitate the blade up and down or side to side along the thin edge. This helps remove any insulating air or gas bubbles. Do not agitate side to side as the soft metal can actually warp from the fluid being cooler on side versus the other. Agitate so the fluid moves evenly over both sides of the blade. The blade is very brittle at this point. If you drop it on hard surface, it will crack or may shatter like glass. When it reaches 100F or less, start your temper cycles to reduce the stress. Handle your blade carefully at this stage or you may end up with a cracked or broken blade. It will help if you pre-heat the oil to around 100F. This can be done by heating up some junk steel and sticking it in the oil a couple times.
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Old 04-18-2013, 07:26 PM
imajalapeno imajalapeno is offline
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Also,is there a way to...un heat treeat steel?? Cause I believe once you heat treat it it is to hard to work with... but if you want to work with it again what do you do?
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Old 04-18-2013, 08:07 PM
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Naboyle Naboyle is offline
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Search button!!! Aldo's come annealed. You can heat treat a knife with a campfire if you have to. Yes that forge would work. Is that the best solution, no. You can "unheat treat" steal. It's called annealing. But then your back to square one. Do 90% of your work pre heat treat. After its hard you just gotta take your time, don't over heat the blade. I'm not really sure what you mean by " if you want to work with it again" there are lots of videos on this site, thats why i say use the search button. There's a guy who shows and tells you how to grind a blade that's already been heat treated. I know cause I just watched it today. Most of these question have been answered numerous times. I'm not being a @ick. I'm also a newb. But I do know how to put a little effort into searching for an answer before I ask the question
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Old 04-18-2013, 08:16 PM
imajalapeno imajalapeno is offline
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I'm not an idiot,I've tried serching this place already.Not my fault the search button doesn't work on my iphone
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  #8  
Old 04-18-2013, 08:22 PM
imajalapeno imajalapeno is offline
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But thank you for the help anyways
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Old 04-18-2013, 09:23 PM
Doug Lester Doug Lester is offline
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If you are using a torch to heat your blade for heat treating an acetylene torch with a rosebud tip would be better. I've attempted to do it with a propane torch but it just didn't seem to want to do it. Maybe it would have if I kept with it but I said the heck with it and fired up my forge.

If you feel the need to work on your blade in the untempered condition you don't even have to anneal it. Normalization will make it soft enough. It's actually better to avoid a critical temperature annealing because it can lead to corsening of the carbides in the steel. Heating the steel to an austinizing temperature will erase the effects of any previous heat treatment.

Doug


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Last edited by Doug Lester; 04-18-2013 at 09:30 PM.
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  #10  
Old 04-19-2013, 05:07 AM
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I already told you how to use the search button on an iPhone in another post.
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Old 04-19-2013, 06:07 AM
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Old 04-19-2013, 08:43 AM
Imakethings Imakethings is offline
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imajalapeno,

Couple things for you.
1. Fill out your profile so we know where you are, might be a knifemaker in your area who's willing to take you under his wing.
2. Annealing, HT, and tempering are what will really make or break (sometimes literally) a good knife.
3. Even if steel come annealed, do it again. with 1084 or 5160 heat the steel up to a medium orange and stick it in a bucket of vermiculite or pearlite to cool. Both vermiculite and pearlite reflect heat very well, the vermiculite is much finer and does a better job, but use what you can find.
4. Both 5160 and 1084 are oil hardening steels, you can get them harder by preheating your oil before quenching.

I also highly suggest reading through:
http://www.caffreyknives.net/journeymanarticle.html

The processes described in that article are very good and valuable.

Welcome and glad to have you here!
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Old 04-19-2013, 10:07 AM
imajalapeno imajalapeno is offline
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Naboyle, I have tried that and it didn't work..thank you for the help......
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  #14  
Old 04-21-2013, 06:40 AM
nate d. nate d. is offline
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imajalpeno, check your PM.
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