420J2 blade question

C

ctf58

Joined
Oct 13, 2015
Messages
25
Hello all, I'm a noob to all things knives and trying to learn all I can. For the fun of it I invested in one of the knives mentioned in a thread in the general discussion area.
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...de-pic-heavy?p=15539204&posted=1#post15539204
I'm in deep, it cost $4.00...
Anyway joking aside, some mention that they think the heat treatment of some of these "bottom of the barrel" blades was non existent or insufficient at best. I think I got one of the heat treat lacking blades. I was evening the bevel and putting an edge on this blade and it is so soft that my medium stone was taking metal off like I was using a 200 grit diamond plate on it. I moved to my #1000 wetstone and it was still removing a ton of metal. I have not run a file across it yet.

Is there a way to heat treat it again and make it harder? I only have a propane torch right now. I'm just experimenting and trying to learn. I'm not expecting much.

It is a sweet little beater knifeto keep in the tool box as is and easy to resharpen. But I was just wondering if I could get the blade a little harder to hold it's edge longer.

What's the worst I can do with a propane torch?

Thanks in advance,
ctf58
 
The commercial blades are to some degree a "You get what you pay for" situation. For $4.00 you get a knife shaped piece of steel that isn't high grade and has a basic HT. For $15-20, you get better steel and a better HT with cryo.

The HT on most of the commercial blades, even the budget ones, is usually good enough to make a serviceable knife. They shoot for mid to upper Rc50's, somewhere between Rc54 and Rc57. One reason why you may be removing metal easily is that they are ground pretty thin at the edge. You seem to remove more material, but it actually is not much. The other may be that you are comparing this to what you normally sharpen, which may be a much tougher and harder steel on a Spyderco or other knife.

Just put an edge on and use it, you can't re-do the HT.
 
Thanks you for the response. I did not know if you could re-heat treat since you can anneal to soften.
 
A stainless blade has a complex annealing process and a complex HT. The HT requires a programmable HT oven, and liquid nitrogen.
 
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