Brass rod test, off angle?

A.McPherson said:
So one thing I do while using my smaller forge (it's more erratic on maintaining temps) is I'll hold the knife across the opening of the opening to heat the main body of the knife.
That way I can get everything heated up pretty hot before I stick the whole thing to get it up to final heat. Just trying now to over heat the tip!!
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I don't understand what you mean by "across the opening", but I had some intriguing results with 1084 (instead of the 1075 I've been struggling with) today when I pulled the muffle and thermocouple so I could just move the knife around freely without hitting walls and use a magnet to tell temps.

I did a 3x normalize and quench. The grain structure looks great. Had some trouble with the tip heating up faster but it seemed like I was able to even it out easier than with the muffle. I bought some nuclayer no scale this morning so the scale wasn't too bad. I realize the results are meaningless without using the same steel but it's something. The 1084 definitely hardened.

For whatever reason, the muffle was making it really difficult to compensate for the hotspot. The thermocouple was wildly inconsistent. I think a veteran could make it work, but with little experience I feel that I overcomplicated the whole thing.

I'll try more 1075 tomorrow. Not ready to blame the steel yet, but doesn't NJSB's 1084 have some extra vanadium to control grain growth?
 
Idk about whether or not the 1084 has any vanadium or not, but it does have more manganese which will make it easier to harden in the canola.
 
Either way, I have to make another blank with 1075. How many broken blades until I can be confident that the HT works? :D
 
N.W. Gean said:
I don't understand what you mean by "across the opening"
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Ok, so you put your knife in the forge, the tip heats up first. Pull the knife out, turn it side ways to the forge, so that the main part of the blade is being held in the dragons breath coming out of the forge, and the tip is being held out of the flames.
That way the tip cools down, while the rest of the blade is still being heated. Then when the tip is cooler, return the whole thing back into the forge.
 
Ah I see. I bet if I ran more gas pressure to do that it would work great. Doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of dragon's breath at 1 psi.
 
You said your forge had a hotspot. Is there rest of the forge realitivly the same temp or is there a large variation in the color once your forge is up to temp?

Other than the hotspot I mean.
 
I'd say the colors look roughly the same. The only evidence I have of the hotspot is that the end of the blade becomes non magnetic faster. That could be because it's thinner at the tip though. I'll be honest, I miss my 2 brick forge. It seemed much simpler to get a working heat treat there :thumbsdown:
 
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