Can hot tap water mess up the temper on knife steels?

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KennyB

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Jan 19, 2010
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I cut up food with my EDC knives a lot. Mostly because I live with people that can't keep my kitchen knives sharp. The other day I wondered if my knife steels that I use on my EDCs (1085,1095, S30V, 14C28N) can be screwed up in any way by really hot water. I'm not sure how hot my tap water is, but it can get quite hot so I was starting to wonder if I could be screwing up knife steels that weren't meant to be washed under scalding hot water.

I've looked up some of the heat treatment stuff on 1080, 1084 etc. on one of those graphs that shows the various stages of heat-treatment and time ( forget the names of them ), but I don't remember it well enough to recall what temperatures would screw anything up.

Anyway, I think it would be kind of hard to find that kind of info for S30V or 14C anyway, so what do you guys think? Is my really-hot-tap water running any risk of screwing up my knives' temper? Are there other properties of the heat treat that it could effect, or is anything clear on up to boiling fine?
 
No. Unless you're reaching several hundred degrees, you're fine. Boiling hot water isn't even close to tempering temperature.
 
I seriously doubt it. At sea level, water cannot get above 212*F. The water from your tap is probably more like 130* tom 140*. To ruin the temper, I believe you need to exceed several hundred degrees. I think you're fine in hot tap water.
 
If your hot water is over 120F you're wasting energy and risking scalding. Even 150F shouldn't affect knife steel.
 
Not unless your Tap water is around 400 degrees and you let it sit under the tap for hours.
 
only if the local atmospheric pressure in Yakima, WA is 18+ atmospheres

under normal conditions water cannot remain a liquid above 212 F which is not going to hurt any blade
 
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Im sorry and don't mean to offend, but OP gave me the first laugh of the morning. Refreshing. :D
 
Nope. 212 is as hot at that'll get. I don't even thing a pressure cooker would do it...those are up around 250 maybe.

Now the water inside a nuclear reactor? That's like 900...but temper will be the least of your worries.

The kind of thing you gotta worry about is sticking your blade in a campfire and things like that.
 
HoosierQ said:
The kind of thing you gotta worry about is sticking your blade in a campfire and things like that.
Click to expand...

Didn't you ever see Rambo part 2?
They stick his knife in hot coals to torture a POW. The knife gets white hot and it still has enough temper to disembowel bad guys 10 years later.
I wouldn't worry about it :-P
 
Now, if we were talking about an E-z-bake oven... Well then we might have a problem.
 
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