The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details:
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is $300 $250 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
Give us some info on how you heat treated the blade, did you cycle the steel, how many times at what heat and for how long did you hold the temp, what temp did you bring the blade up to for the quench, what type of oil did you use to quench and what temp was the oil at, did you heat treat the blade full thickness or did you pre-grind bevels. How thick is your blade. If your having to grind more than a couple light passes something is wrong. First thing you need to look at is your process to find out if there’s something that you aren’t quite doing right. Also are you heat treating in a forge or oven.
In a oven shoot for 1475 instead of 1500 1095 is very particular about the heat. I’d leave the edge at least .05, is the edge hardened or can you file a deep groove with a chainsaw file? Also did thermal cycle the blade at all? Depending on where you got the steel it could be that it isn’t in a state that’s ready to harden properly. To me it sounds like the issue is the blade may not have hardened properly
I have never used this steel myself, but I always read it needs fast quench oil. Maybe the canola oil is too slow to harden it properly?
Stacy
there low spots like pitting on a large scale, no idea wether their soft.
Is this a forged blade? If you took some photos to share here it would help us figure it out but you should definitely not have deep pitting just from heat treating especially using a oven
Josh this was stock removal blade 3/16×11/2 from New Jersey steel, I'm sure it's so.ething I'm missing. I'm working getting pic hosted to share.
Personally I’d say scrap the first three and keep working on new pieces and try to learn the process, trying to mess with the three that have an issue not knowing how they went wrong is just a recipe for headache and frustration. You haven’t mentioned if you thermal cycled the steel which with 1095 from Njsb you absolutely need to thermal cycle. This is the process I would recommend, Cut your blade out and profile it, anything over 1/8” stock I would pre-grind some bevels in, take them about half way up your blade and leave the edge atleast .05” Thick, I prefer leaving a good flat portion on the blade to correct any warps from heat treating. After the holes have been drilled, blade profiled and pre ground if needed you are ready to thermal cycle the blade at descending temperatures, bring the blade up to 1650 hold for 2-5 minutes, then 1550 hold for 2-5 minutes, then finally 1450 for 2-5 minutes. After the 3 cycles you are ready to harden the blade, bring it up to 1475 hold for 5 minutes and quench, parks 50 is the better quench oil for 1095 it really needs the faster oil to get the best results. Then temper your blade just like you have been doing. Practice a known process and get that down.
Josh
It’s essential for almost any steel depending on the condition the steel comes in, last I checked Njsb couldn’t say what state their 1095 is in so therefore it’s a process that is necessary. Check out the book Knife engineering by Larrin it explains a lot of important information about steel and heat treating and I think it’s only $30, I promise it will be the best knife making investment you ever make.
my oven is 3500 watts /240 vlt and PID controlled inside dimension is 4"×6 5"×16" it gets to temp at 1500* in about 12 min and recovers quick.Exactly how accurate I really dont know.
