1045

Sam Salvati

Sam Salvati

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Aug 6, 2007
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Thanks to my buddy Steve, he is going to roll out some 1045 from round bar to flat bar for me. What could be expected from working with this steel? I know I won't be getting any serious super hardness, that's a given. Just wondering, would I be looking to go with a lower temperature for hardening, or for a higher temperature? Is 1045 a very shallow hardening steel? Will even parks#50 be sufficient? Will water/brine cause any ill effects on a microscopic level? Not really a common blade steel due to it's quite low carbon, and I might be :jerkit: but I think there might be some bits here and there to it. And no not just cause I got a bunch of it:D.
 
On the Charts from SECO/WARWICK I am looking at you can harden it to 63-64 Rockwell and with 300 degree temper draw it down to 55 - 57 Rc. Same book advises 1500 - 1550 for hardening temp, and using a water or caustic to quench, then tempering to desired hardness.

On their notes on quenchs, they recomend brine over fresh water, as fresh water makes to many bubbles on the surface of the item being quenched, and a 5% caustic soda quench above brine, but that sounds a touch dangerous to me, I woud want to research caustic soda first, gotta be some bad fumes from that !
 
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Yes very shallow hardening .No use for blades. Stick to hammers and 'hawks.Try the brine.
 
63-64 Rc isn't hard enough for knives? Or are you guys just saying it's difficult to get it to harden very far up from the edge?


By the way-
Sam, if you ever end up with a scrap of that stuff, say, at least a couple inches long, shoot me an email. I've been keeping an eye out for a very shallow hardening steel (of known composition rather than scrap out of dad's junk pile) for use on miniatures.
 
63-64 Rockwell is hard enough, but two problems:
1. shallow hardening, which means the knife will likely not be hardend properly all the way throught the knife.
2. The chart shows this steel dropping hardness rather quickly with lower heat. 200 degrees drops the steel from 63-64 Rc to the 60 rc range. My guess would be the edge would be quite "chippy" at 60 rc. 350 degrees puts it in the 53 to 55 Rc range, perfect for a axe....
 
bladsmth said:
as mete said - hammers, axes, hawks, swords Stacy
Click to expand...

I guess I should have not been so vague, SWORDS, that was what I was getting at :). Charlie, I imagine ideally that rockwell is attainable but I don't think I will come too close to that, still a bit left to chance but it is good to know that if you are going to lose a good bit of RC from tempering even at low temperatures you atleast start with a whole lot.

Possum, there should no doubt be some left, shoot me a message in 2 or 3 weeks, I should have things settled a bit more here by then and will send you a bit.

1045 should be pretty interesting as far as hamon go, being so shallow hardening, does more carbon IE W2 make a difference using mono steel with what you end up with?
 
Will do, Sam.

Does anyone happen to have a TTT diagram and tempering/toughness chart for this steel? I didn't realize you could affect the hardness that much by simply boiling it in a pot of water. (!) Some spec sheets might help dispell my ignorance.

I was wanting to play around with creating hamon on some minis. I figure I'd need a very shallow hardening steel so the whole thing doesn't harden, considering the blades will only be about a milimeter thick or so. But it will probably be over a year before I get the time for it...
 
There is some interesting mention of 1045 in Verhoeven's book Metallurgy of steel. I wonder why 1045 seems shunned as a effective blade steel, it seems like it will reach a high enough rockwell, i am not sure if carbon level will effect the abrasion resistance, is it because the hardness does not penetrate deeply? If left with with unhardened steel in the center of the blade, would it be similarly not as structurally sound as a blade with a soft spine? Seems like the perfect match for that water/brine hardening steel I was looking for awhile back, not much chance of a ping with such a low carbon content, such a high level of shallow hardening should make for some excellent hamon. Are there some faults I am missing?
 
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In annealed 1045 half the grains are ferrite and half are pearlite .At best heat treating it will give you very low carbon martensite. Not good enough for blades ,they won't hold up.Hammers a hawks ok but 4140 would be better and 4340 would be best.
 
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