All About Austenitizing on New Website - KnifeSteelNerds.com

Larrin

Larrin

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I have launched a new website as a place to write my articles on different aspects of metallurgy, steel, heat treating, etc. To celebrate the new launch I have written a three part series about austenitizing steel, where I answer such questions as:

What is happening to the microstructure when austenitizing?
When heat treating to the same hardness is it better to austenitize high and temper higher or austenitize low and temper low?
What are those preheating steps for?
Will a triple quench lead to better properties?

All this and more on the new website!

Part 1: http://knifesteelnerds.com/2018/02/28/austenitizing-part-1-what-it-is/
Part 2: http://knifesteelnerds.com/2018/03/01/austenitizing-part-2-effects-on-properties/
Part 3: http://knifesteelnerds.com/2018/03/07/austenitizing-part-3-multi-step-austenitizing/
 
Good job Larrin!

This will be good to have the Doc write about all the stuff that we get wrong.

Hoss
 
So, in some steels, vanadium carbides are bigger than chromium carbides, dissolved carbon and grain size influence toughness more than carbide volume, hardness matters more than carbide volume in cutlery specific wear tests, multiple quenching and other heat treatments can refine grain size, and grain size reduction increases both strength and toughness. Oh, and choose your austenizing temperature carefully. Got it. I'll read all this again and come up with some questions, but that will do for now. Excellent information.
 
me2 said:
So, in some steels, vanadium carbides are bigger than chromium carbides, dissolved carbon and grain size influence toughness more than carbide volume, hardness matters more than carbide volume in cutlery specific wear tests, multiple quenching and other heat treatments can refine grain size, and grain size reduction increases both strength and toughness. Oh, and choose your austenizing temperature carefully. Got it. I'll read all this again and come up with some questions, but that will do for now. Excellent information.
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For a given steel the carbon in solution and grain size matters more than carbides, but when comparing steels the carbide volume often matters more, both for toughness and wear resistance or edge retention.
 
How does line intercept grain size compare to ASTM grain size, if it does at all?
 
Great site Larrin, lookin' forward to readin' more, maybe a guest appearance or two from the Old Man ;). I worked in a foundry for a few years where they did a lot of work for the military and government interests. I got to know about few of the engineers and we had many an interesting conversation about steels and how they were perfected or should I say the continuous perfecting of the process and recipes.

I'm not engineer and certainly have no formal education but bein' an end user and a mechanic/machinist/fabricator I see the results the different alloys and HTs can have on steel. It'll be interesting to read your ideas and your take on the different alloys bein' used today compared to say 50 years ago. We've come a long way in a relatively short time and just by understandin' the process better and havin' better control over all the parameters involved in "consistantly" makin' a predictible quality Cuttin' steel that's tweakable for personal tastes and specs.

See you around on knifesteelnerds.com.
 
When i was a professor of mathematics (i didnt get tenure, and ultimately ended up in graphics industry) i was invited by the business college to give a talk to some economists on the Black-Scholes equation. Everyone was nodding and following along as i was talking about Radon-Nikodym derivatives and Brownian Motion and all this fancy mathematics that didnt exist 30 years ago, when all the sudden this guy in the back that seemed to be very interested throughout the talk raises his hand and asks "what is that funny looking P symbol?" And it all dawned on me no one in that room had the slightest clue what i was talking about.

I say all that to say that if you intend to be thorough and wish to get the naive up to speed on knife related metallurgy, it would serve the reader well to at least define some keywords. What the heck is pearlite? And all semi scientific writing geared towards the naive should always have phrases like "of course" and "clearly" striken when used in regards to the subject matter.

I like your use of references and visual aids. I hope you keep building the site, it could be very informative. I have read everything on your site and wish there was more to read.
 
It's not too long. I had a bunch of things to catch up on after just getting my power back after a day and a half. Long is not a problem. Just keep breakin' it down so even morons like me can understand it. :p:thumbsup:
 
Randy3000 said:
When i was a professor of mathematics (i didnt get tenure, and ultimately ended up in graphics industry) i was invited by the business college to give a talk to some economists on the Black-Scholes equation. Everyone was nodding and following along as i was talking about Radon-Nikodym derivatives and Brownian Motion and all this fancy mathematics that didnt exist 30 years ago, when all the sudden this guy in the back that seemed to be very interested throughout the talk raises his hand and asks "what is that funny looking P symbol?" And it all dawned on me no one in that room had the slightest clue what i was talking about.

I say all that to say that if you intend to be thorough and wish to get the naive up to speed on knife related metallurgy, it would serve the reader well to at least define some keywords. What the heck is pearlite? And all semi scientific writing geared towards the naive should always have phrases like "of course" and "clearly" striken when used in regards to the subject matter.

I like your use of references and visual aids. I hope you keep building the site, it could be very informative. I have read everything on your site and wish there was more to read.
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Thank you for your suggestions. As I said in a message to Stacy yesterday, it is hard to write for a lay audience while being 1) understandable, 2) short, and 3) accurate. The longer time I spend defining things from the beginning the more I skip out on meeting goal #2. To keep things to a reasonable length I could oversimplify things but then I would no longer meet goal #3. I could have started from the beginning, book style, with "what is steel?" and going from there but I made the decision not to. I will be going back and defining more things through articles, but essentially the site assumes you are already a "steel nerd." That is not an attempt to be elitist, but to be able to write articles about slightly more advanced topics without having to write for 1-3 years before I get to anything.
 
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Larrin said:
That’s code for “its too long.” :)
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I was in the same boat yesterday. I had a 13h day at my real job and was only able to skim between clients. I’ll be reading in more detail today.

Warren
 
Thanks Larrin. I will let this rn a bit to let people see it, then sticky it to the top of the page.
 
Larrin said:
Thank you for your suggestions. As I said in a message to Stacy yesterday, it is hard to write for a lay audience while being 1) understandable, 2) short, and 3) accurate. The longer time I spend defining things from the beginning the more I skip out on meeting goal #2. To keep things to a reasonable length I could oversimplify things but then I would no longer meet goal #3. I could have started from the beginning, book style, with "what is steel?" and going from there but I made the decision not to. I will be going back and defining more things through articles, but essentially the site assumes you are already a "steel nerd." That is not an attempt to be elitist, but to be able to write articles about slightly more advanced topics without having to write for 1-3 years before I get to anything.
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I totally get that! After a bit of online searching there is a lack of a consolidated advanced treatment of knife related metallurgy and so you will be filling a gap.
 
I hope the information you have previously published in your BladeForum contributions will be included in your new website. Having one place for all info is a great help.
 
Bookmarked to my Toolbar. Thanks for the effort and your thoughts, Larrin! I'm headed there in just a sec to scope it out.
 
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