brines for quenching

sunny_2_75

sunny_2_75

Joined
Nov 23, 2009
Messages
71
Hey everyone, Ive been wanting to get some W-2 and mess around with some hammons. I know W-2 is a fast quench steel. Parks 50 is recommended and is difficult to get or so it seems. So in my research Ive ran across a few articles that discuss the use of brine quenching. I found one that stated that you would use 2lbs of salt to 3 gallons of water. That grabbed my attention as it seems much easier then trying to get the proper oil quench and ......cheaper!!! So my question is......why have I not seen this discussed more? it would seem that if Brine quenching worked that well we would abandon the parks 50 and equivalent oil queches and just use Brine. But... thats not what I have seen when researching the fast quench steels. So there has to be more info on this that gives all the information ...pros and cons. To any of you that have that knowlege base any info would be great. Thanks Sunny.
 
Brine quenching works very well.....about half the time. The other half ends up in two pieces of steel.

Brine quench is made up with 3 to 4 pounds of salt to five gallons of water. What you want is about an 8-10% solution. The old adage was, "enough salt to make the solution float a hard boiled egg." The blades are quenched in the warm brine, and if all goes well the steel converts into a rock hard martensite blade.....if it survives the quench and does not have the dreaded "PING", which is the sound of the blade tearing itself in half.

Parks #50 will get a good martensite blade with virtually no chance of the blade cracking or breaking in the quench. The final blade after tempering will be the same.

The only realm of brine quench is attaining the most active hamons, and getting sori on Japanese long blades. The steels used for this are very low in any alloy ingredients, and will survive the brine quench most of the time. 1095 has too much manganese and other alloys to brine quench safely.

With practice ( hundreds or thousands of quenches), a person will gain the ability to brine quench W-2 or 1095 with good results, but even a master will still break a fairly good number of blades. Most people are not willing to leave all those broken blades in the scrap can just to say, "I quenched this knife in brine."
 
Thanks Stacy.....I knew there had to be more to it. I guess its back to finding some Parks 50!!!!
 
There are a few members who quench in brine, exclusively. I don't know what their success rate is but perhaps they could offer advice if brine is where you want to go. If you choose to go with oil, Houghton Quench K is at par with P50 for speed.
 
Phillip has used brine a lot but has lost a few blades in the process but the ones that escape the Tink Fairy as he calls it:rolleyes: end up with beautilful, active hamons..Thicker than normal edges before heat treat, finer than normal finish with *side to side* instead of *up and down* grind lines before quench...
 
Thanks for the replies....I did forget to mention that those that do use Brines from what I read do an interupted quench, then then finish in oil....maybe this adds to the success. Like all aspects of knife making I guess you get the info you can.....then get after it......Always a learning curve.
 
you are correct about that last part 3-4 seconds in brine then canola oil seems to reap the benefits of both quite well
 
Lisa is neglecting to mention my ritual..The night before a Brine quench I place a shot of bourbon and a slice of apple stack cake on my anvil to appease the Tink fairy lest she take her wraith out on my poor innocent knife blade..Whenever I forget said tribute I hear and feel that dreaded Tink thru my tongs into my very soul..It hurts bad..
 
I quench my w2 and 1095 in brine or water exclusively. I rarely have cracked blades. I also don't do any bevel grinding until after the blade is hardened, and I do it on a belt grinder with a water drip to keep the blades cool. I can heat the blade evenly this way. Also going through the proper normalization will help. Just my 2 cents
 
I will say that doing it that way will require you to have skill in blade straightening because warpage is a common thing.
 
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