1084 quenchant

V

Vulcanite

Joined
Jan 16, 2009
Messages
293
The cashen blades site says water or brine for sections > 1/4" thick or oil for <3/16".

What kind of oil? I was thinking on making some "goddards goo" which is equal parts paraffin, beeswax and lard and is solid at room temperature. I think he might soften it up a little it it is cold bit i gather that he sticks the blades right in to the thick congealed stuff, edge first. He reports that this followed by temper cycles gives him a consistent differential temper w/o needing to "draw the spine" w a torch nor torching the edge before quenching.
 
I use Parks 50 quenching oil, which is made by Heatbath and available throuth Maxam oil in Ft. Worth. I think you'll find that most responses will tell you to use a good fast forumulated quenching oil if you are serious about making the best knife you can.

Aside from that, I would recomment peanut oil or Canola oil, which would be the 2nd most popular quenching oil for 1084.

There are plenty of threads about qhenching oils and I think you'll find that these are recommended the most.
 
Goddards goo is not a good choice for any steel. if you cannot afford an engineered fast oil like parks 50, use Canola preheated to 130 f.

-Page
 
I lost three blades to goddard's goop. You have no idea what it will do because every batch is different. Solid doesn't help except for moving it around.

Canola works awesome for 1084 - why contaminate it? Hit the grocery store.

-Daizee
 
I changed from dirty motor oil to canola oil with great gains in hardness
 
The benefit to solid in my application is that i am making full tang knives out of wide plates of steel and with integral "D" guards. I want to put the edges in first and gradually submerge to get a slightly differential temper. Most will have the edge on the same side as the D guard and i want the D guard to be springy, not brittle. Maybe the outward edge ones i will just do straight down into the oil dagger style.

Could i fill up a segment of like 6" pipe with the oil for a verticle quench or might that melt the pipe? I cant think of anothe tall narrow container like that for a vertical quench.
 
Vulcanite said:
Could i fill up a segment of like 6" pipe with the oil for a verticle quench or might that melt the pipe? I cant think of anothe tall narrow container like that for a vertical quench.
Click to expand...

A metal, gallon paint can. You can get them, new, from Lowes, etc.
 
Once you quench you could always use a torch to hit the gaurds and back of the blade to temper it back.
 
Yup. Get canola oil and draw the other parts back with a torch. Look up Corny Keg, Cornelius Keg on CL. They are the portable soda pop containers with the SS bodies and black tops. They often can be had for cheap and can be sealed up when no in use. They hold around 3 gallons.

There are some great posts in the past by Tai Goo and others with real testing data to support the use of canola over all the other easily available options like motor oil when an engineered quenchant isn't an option.
 
The cost of a quality quench oil is not much more than the cost of Canola oil. A 5 gallon pail of Parks #50 will last several years and if you ever decide to use other steels like 1095, W1, W2 etc. you already have the proper oil.
 
My knives will be ca 12" so the paint can will be too short. I will look up rhose kegs. What is the CS?

The whole thing of drawing out the spine has been criticized as leaving an "embrittlement zone" that is why i was attracted to the differential quench technigue. I guess ill just have dagger and normal outward edges through tempered and a little softer overall.
 
I am just a newb when it comes to knife making and what not but from what I have read, drawing back the spine and what not has to be done in a controlled manner with some patience and practice but once you have it down the results are very good. I am just going off of instructional videos (some very good) with destructive test of the blade following several regular test. Didnt seem to have any ill effects but many good traits. I think a regular temper is still required though to keep the edge from being too brittle.

This is just from my own reading and watching, some of the pros could probably hugely expound upon this.
 
make a quick and dirty test blade, full harden it in 130f canola, temper the whole blade for 2 hours in an oven that has been preheated to 400f for at least 20 minutes before you put your blade in with a cookie sheet above and below the blade to shield it from direct infrared then put it through all sorts of real life cutting tests. Forget all this edge quench and spine softening mumbo jumbo, you can test them against your baseline blade later if you want to, if you do your initial full harden right you will find all the other stuff kind of worthless because a properly hardened properly tempered blade shouldn't fail unless you do something stupid like batoning your blade or using it as a prybar. I love it when newbs are experts because they watched a video most likely put on youtube by another newb with 3 blades under his belt and a video camera and read Wayne Goddards book.

</RANT>

OK seriously folks, get a piece of known steel, make 3 roughly blade shaped pieces of identical cross section, do one each way and test this for yourselves

-Page
 
darrin sanders said:
The cost of a quality quench oil is not much more than the cost of Canola oil. A 5 gallon pail of Parks #50 will last several years and if you ever decide to use other steels like 1095, W1, W2 etc. you already have the proper oil.
Click to expand...

Darrin is right, parks is a little hard to find right now but a very worthwhile investment. Houghton quench oils are good too

-Page
 
So all the guys who edge quench and differential HT are just wasting there time and doing it for no more then looks in some cases?

The videos I was watching most recently were the Kyle Royer videos on youtube. yeah hes a newb but I really liked his videos.
 
quint said:
So all the guys who edge quench and differential HT are just wasting there time and doing it for no more then looks in some cases?

The videos I was watching most recently were the Kyle Royer videos on youtube. yeah hes a newb but I really liked his videos.
Click to expand...

From metallurgical standpoint, unless they are specifically trying for a hamon, . . . yes. I know that will piss off a lot of folks who claim some sort of mystical significance to the process, hell I used to draw back my spines because someone famous writing a column in a knife magazine said that was how you were supposed to do it, there is a whole lot of useless information out there. Thankfully when I started making knives we didn't have newbtube to promulgate bad ideas

-Page
 
Vulcanite said:
The benefit to solid in my application is that i am making full tang knives out of wide plates of steel and with integral "D" guards. I want to put the edges in first and gradually submerge to get a slightly differential temper. Most will have the edge on the same side as the D guard and i want the D guard to be springy, not brittle. Maybe the outward edge ones i will just do straight down into the oil dagger style.

Could i fill up a segment of like 6" pipe with the oil for a verticle quench or might that melt the pipe? I cant think of anothe tall narrow container like that for a vertical quench.
Click to expand...

I use the insert from an old 6 quart ice cream maker for my quench bucket -- filled with peanut oil heated to 140. (peanut oil is left over from the turkey fryer, so no real cost to me)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top