15N20 tempering

[jdm61]

I use 1084 and 15N20 for most of my damascus andI go with the 1500/400F recipe which by all accounts will give you 60+. The numbers that Kevin Cashen has for 1080 and 1084 say that this will give you maybe 61 just using those steels. Here is my question? What does 1480-1500 and 400 door 15N20? I have seen 2 "red squiggly line" charts, one posted by Chuck Bybee and one from Germany that say 400F will give you 58-59Rc. have any of you ever tested a monosteel 15N20 blade?hardness

 

[JTknives]

I get much better performance from 15n20 when I use lower temp for austenite. You can get quite high numbers out of 15n20 if you tune your numbers, around 66RC is common. In my testing 15n20 is tough enough to handle high hardness. I can't see any reason to drop 15n20 below 60RC and 62rc in fact preforms quite well. Now this all depends on blade geometry and use but it is quite tough. If you don't play with your temps to find maximum hardness and go with the default 1475-1500° you will most likely end up in the 64rc range. With a 400° temper will most likely drop you to the 59rc range but a slight tweak and temp adjustment will rase that hardness a good bit even with a 400° temper

 

[Kentucky]

Lisa uses a lot of 15n20 for smaller blades. We have about 120' of it that's 12" wide and .83 thick in the form of large uddenholm bandsaw blade.. Been using about 1475° with about a 375° temper. Im pretty sure that puts it around 60-61rc.. prks 50 quench

 

[Willie71]

1465 to 1470f to austentize, quench in DT- 48, Rc66 out of quench. I temper between 300 and 350. I walk the temper to Rc62. I find different sources temper a bit differently.

 

[DevinT]

It is simple to do and best if you run your own test coupons.

Hoss