01 heat treat problems

H

Happychicken

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Nov 14, 2018
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I am very new to knife making and recently heat treated two 01 knifes I heated in a coffee can forge with map gas torch. I waited a bit past non magnetic a fairly bright orange and dunked in vegetable oil. I did heat the oil by heating an old large wrench and dunking in oil. I tempered for 2 one hour cycles at 400f in my oven.
Anyway I was able to cut into knife after with a file. I actually made the choil after heat treat with chainsaw file with moderate pressure.
I have read a lot about file testing but no idea how hard I should be pushing file into knife?
Does oil go bad? Should I get new oil?
Should I temper knife less?
Thanks for any input
 
I find i need to soak o1 at temp for 20 minutes or so. I used canola oil and reached 60hrc. Maybe try 1084, it doesnt need to soak. It needs faster oil. I use parks 50. Once hardened the file should not bite. It feels like glass.
 
You only need to hold o1 at temp for 10 mins to get the absolute most out of it but it will harden fine by doing it like you done.if done properly
Did you have enough oil to really agitate it?
My canola hasn' gone off yet and I've used it a lot
 
Really dunk it and move it up and Down
A gallon should be enough
Just sometimes it doesn' work out
Just do it again
 
Out of quench, the file should skate across the blade and not bite. It helps to have a piece of unhardened to compare against if you don't know what it should feel like.

Out of the temper, depending on the resulting HRC and the hardness of the file, you could definitely bite into the steel.
 
To heat treat o1 the wright way is al little more complex. You can find a lot of info in the stickies.
But from what i read, you schould still be able to get it hard. Most likely not the maximal hardness, but still hard.
The file test is done after the quench and before tempering. The file should skate of the steel. It may bite a bit in the top layer but afther that it should skate. A good way to test if the steel has hardenend is to compare it with an left over piece of o1 steel which you know for sure its not hardend. Use the same force and if the steel is hard, you should feel the difference.
Tempering at 400 F is fine, if the HT worked... and youre oven is constant enough.
I dont know what oil you are using. To get the best results, it matters a lot witch oil you use. But with any oil, it should at least get it hardend.
Hope it helps you.

And if i said something stupid, others with much more experience will roast me...
 
No roasting!! Thank you. What was described above is what happened. The tang was not heat treated so it does skate on the blade as compared to the deep biting in that’s happening in the tang. But after tempering the file bit in more And I got nervous it lost its hardness.
 
I use O1 exclusively now and even after tempering, with decarb removed, the file should still slide along fairly easily. If spherodized anneal state is a 1 and straight out of the oil is a 10, i would say after tempering i am around a 8.5 as far as the file test goes.
 
O-1 needs a controlled temperature at 1475-1500F and a soak time of 10 minutes to get the tungsten and chromium into solution properly. That said, a "Heat it till a bit above non-magnetic and dunk it in Canola oil" HT will harden the steel. What you will get from that is basically hardened 1084 steel with free chromium and tungsten in the matrix.

Since the 1BF you use won't give controlled temps and won't allow a soak time, what you did is fine. The blade is still good.

I recommend using 1084 if the HT parameters will be what you have. It requires no soak time, will hit Rc 65 as-quenched, and is pretty forgiving of unregulated forges. It makes great knives.
 
I have some 1080 is that ok to try or should I get 1084? I have heard that they are close but maybe not close enough.
I can’t thank you guys enough for taking the time to correct me on these issues!
 
I also just picked up some 80crv2 and the guy I got it from I could heat treat it like 1084? I searched this but a lot varying opinion
 
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