blade quenching

[azdave35]

i need some help with quenching..after heat treating i have been having trouble with warping..what is the correct way to quench a blade without warping it?..

 

[Jason Fry]

I'll take a stab at this one. I'm only on blade number 10, but I destroyed a few in the quench prior to the first good one, and I learned a couple of lessons. One, don't overheat your blade prior to the quench. Two, normalize several times prior to your heat to quench. Three, if you're cracking, use a slower quench medium. There are several recent good threads about quench medium, so I won't elaborate there.

 

[Kevin R. Cashen]

If agitating by moving the blade be certain that it is tip to tang not side to side. Most distortion issues are best dealt with during the many operations before the quench, i.e. good normalizing and annealing proper forging and evenly done stock removal, many machining operations are the worst corntributers to distortion in the final heat treatment that I have seen, if not dealt with using proper stress relieving treatments. An finally, a quench that takes you through 1000F fast enough to avoid any transformations and then slowy and evenly from 550F to room temp is rather imporant to lessen problems.

 

[galadduin]

And dont make too thin or the chances of warping or cracking is high. Also try to interrupt the quench for any steel, it will help the core of the blade and the surface cool at the same time. Try to read http://www.houghtonintl.com/images/Hougton%20on%20quenching.pdf. It is valuable to understand the quench stages....

 

[Patrickknives]

Two other suggestions,

depending on the steel you can do alot of straightening after the quench prior to tempering

and I use a edge quench which seems to help, not sure if I have ever had warping with a edge quench. WIth the thickest part of the blade out of the quench it seems to help keep it straight.

 

[R.C.Reichert]

I never thought about this until just recently but... When I heat up my steel I set it on a couple fire brick and use the tiger torch for heat get it to temperature. For lack of a forge. If I just lay it on one side and don't flip it over once in a while, I think it might tend to get hotter on one side than the other. I'm thinking this practice or "malpractice" might have caused a blade or two to warp for me in the past. Does that make sense?

 

[Patrickknives]

A so I see said the blind man, it is very likely, Befor I got my kiln I would build a box out of fire brick and set the blade in so It did not come in contact with the flame. It is important to get even heat, I can see the hot side expanding and the cooler side not which would cause a warp. You should be able to see this prior to the quench.