A couple of questions concerning heat treat on W2

[samuraistuart]

I have a couple of questions I'm hoping you guys can help me with. I tried the searches, but these questions are a bit specific. I'm heat treating in a small forge, and I've been cleaning off the scale every cycle that builds up during normalization. 1500, cool to black, quench, clean scale off. 1350, cool to black, quench, clean scale off, etc.

1. Do you recommend taking the time to clean off the scale that builds up every cycle, or would it be OK to let the scale go, and continue with the normalization and then clean it all off before austenizing?

2. Concerning normalizing/refining Aldo's W2. Not the super high carbon content stuff. .92%, I think. Stock removal only. What initial heat should I be normalizing at, and would this require a soak time? I'm thinking 1500 with a 5 minute soak, but I'm actually wondering if it is necessary to soak at the intital normalizing heat, or should I only soak for 5-10 minutes during austenizing, or should I soak for 5-10 minutes on both intial heat AND austenizing. Shoot, I'm not even sure if an initial heat of 1500 is where I should be. A bit higher maybe?

Thank you so much for your help!

Stuart Davenport

 

[mete]

If your getting large amounts of scale I'd look into excessive oxygen in the fuel mix. Other than that don't worry about it , it actually protects the steel from further oxidation [scale] and decarb.
What is the original structure of the W-2 ? Ask Aldo about this and recommendations for soak. Soak shouldn't be very long as there isn't very high amounts of alloying elements.

 

[samuraistuart]

The buildup is not large.....at all. I've been cleaning it every cycle, not sure why I do that, maybe a bit of the OCD. If the very small amount of scale helps a tad from further oxidising, I'll leave it on. As far as the W2 comp.......... Carbon is .92 Mn is .22 Cr is .07 Ni is .04 V is .165 minute amounts of Si, P, S, Mo, W, Cu, Sn, and Al.