AEB-L question again

[golfer1]

I just did a complete heat treat on some aeb-l knives yesterday, my first time. It appears everything came off pretty well except, some of the stainless steel wrap is stuck to the blades.
My recipe was 1950 for 20 min., dry ice, alcohol for 5 minutes, then two 1 hour cycles at 400. There is some discoloration of the blade but that appears to be all.
Any suggestions as to why the ss stuck to the knives and the best way to remove it?

 

[golfer1]

No one else has had ss stick to the blade during heat treat?

 

[Busto]

Ok I confess it's happened to me before. The heat eats the atmosphere in the foil and creates a vacuum effect and the hot blade steel and foil like the warm feel so much they don't want to separate....Use a little talcum powder sprinkled in the pouch next time and all will be right with the world...Just grab it with some pliers or vice grips and yank it off....

 

[golfer1]

Talcum powder, wouldn't have thought of that. Thanks very much.

 

[JTknives]

I ditched the foil and use nitrogen

 

[Busto]

I ditched the foil and use nitrogen

Me Too...3 years on the Bottle now I don't see going back to foil

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

I have to look into the nitrogen. Seems a good alternative. What was the cost difference between nitrogen and argon.

 

[Busto]

I don't recall the exact price difference but the Argon was a bit more and from my experience from what was being done at work with the GN2 I could not justify the extra for Argon. Once you find the sweet spot on Flow you wonder why you didn't change sooner!

 

[DevinT]

For foil use 321 alloy and don’t clean it and don’t put things like paper in it to burn out the O2.

Hoss

 

[Ken H>]

Hoss: no paper to burn O2, Can you elaborate on reason? What about talc powder to prevent sticking? good? bad? At times I've used talc to prevent sticking, other times didn't use talc. Seldom have a problem with sticking without talc, but if talc doesn't hurt....

 

[DevinT]

321 is designed to eat up the O2, too clean and things will stick.

I’ve never used talc but I’m sure it’ll work.

The idea of putting carbon based material in with the foil started way back in the late seventies. It makes sense when you first hear it but if do enough heat treating, you’ll notice the sticking.

Hoss

 

[J. Hoffman]

I usually don't use paper either. The only time I've had foil stick is when doing M4 at 2200 degrees.

 

[golfer1]

Hoss, I did not add paper to burn but are you saying don't clean the 321 or the knives? I did use 321 by the way.

 

[Lo/Rez]

If it's small bits of foil stuck here and there you should be able to scrape it off with a razor blade.