Cookin oil as a quench for carbon steel

Hankins said:
It will go rancid rather fast and is an expensive way to HT
Very good source is McMaster Carr look for the Fast quench oil it will far oulast the cooking oil for around the same price.
Click to expand...

So what's wrong with rancid oil? Does it affect the flavor of the blade? ;-)

I seriously would like to know if it makes a difference because I have some cooking oil I've been using for about a year. (maybe 10 - 15 blades) I've been working under the (possibly/probably) wrong assumption that unless I saw obvious problems with it (like amorphous floating blobs in it) I could continue to use it without problems.

- LonePine
AKA Paul Meske, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin
 
John L said:
Kevin: Agreed that the canola oil is not the best...but it is all I have in Mexico. Soooo....... I would love to see your database when you finish it. WIll it be available to the public? Thanks very much for your interest.
Click to expand...

John, I found some time ago that being critical of most folks choice of quenchants is as good as calling their mother a filthy name, I sincerely offer no input here, positive or negative about the quenchants used and am sure that most will be delighted with whatever oil they settle upon.

The database will be of immense use to me and bits of it will surface in my writings, but since a good number of the tests within it were done for other entities, many of whom I have signed confidentiality agreements regarding, I will be unable to make it public in its entirety. Although my palette of steels for my own knives is limited, I have done testing and consulting for so many others using just about any commonly used blade steel that the data covers the gamut from ancient bloomery iron and wootz to modern proprietary designer alloys. This data will also plug into my metallography catalogue and inventory as well as my new numbering and filing for the knives I make. It is just my way of getting a handle on all my data so that it is actually useable or at the very least not lost. When our friend Paul Champagne unexpectedly died and took so much information with him, many of us at Ashokan vowed not to let it happen again, this is my way of insuring a legacy for whatever information I may have.

**Now on a side note, today while I was welding up some blades my wife took a message from somebody here at bladeforums that I should P.M. them, but I didn’t get information on who it was. I will make an assumption that it was regarding this discussion and leave notice here- feel free to e-mail me (kevin@cashenblades.com) I had to suspend my P.M. service here some time ago.
 
is there a 'low budget' way to check to see if your cooking oil worked as far as achieving a target Rvalue?
 
Matt,
Canola will work fine on 1075, its what im using with good results.
Everyone, until we can find a freight forwarder to send stuff out to Australia without trying to rape us, then Canola is our best bet for the 10xx steels. The Castrol quench that can be bourght locally is great for 52100 and 5160. We cannot buy a quenchant quick enough for the 10xx steels in Australia.
Cheers Bruce
 
R.Rock said:
is there a 'low budget' way to check to see if your cooking oil worked as far as achieving a target Rvalue?
Click to expand...
Depends on what you mean by low buget.Enco has there set of hardness testing files on sale for 90 bucks.Not bad for a quick test.
Stan
 
SBuzek said:
Depends on what you mean by low buget.Enco has there set of hardness testing files on sale for 90 bucks.Not bad for a quick test.
Stan
Click to expand...

That would be fairly low buck compared to any of the Rockwell testers I have seen.
 
Brine will work with 10xx steels and get the cooling speed required. Oh yes, it's also quite inexpensive.

Over the lifetime of the oil, cooking oil is likely to be far more expensive if one wants it to remain "effective". I'd venture to guess that not one person on this forum sends oil samples out to be analyzed (well, maybe Kevin does). Regular analysis of quench oil is common in professional industry. If you use an oil intended for quenching, you'll at least hopefully burn it up or spill it before it changes too much.

When we venture into the unknown we can end up with all sorts of things going on in our knives that we don't want. How many oil quenched 10xx blades are running around out there with a bunch of fine pearlite in them? Probably more than not.

For the Aussies who don't want to use brine and are having trouble sourcing an oil, it seems that Houghton has an Australian branch. I'd look to them for some Houghto-quench K or perhaps one of their poly quenches.
 
I will correct unkyG's statement that a proper quench oil will be 100X better than a cooking
It will not be 100 times better......but will last 100 times longer.
That is the main difference. If you want to spend $7-15 per gallon for cooking oil , and throw it out in a few months, fine. But for $15 per gallon you can get quench oil that will be going strong years later.
 
some how I knew I would be corrected:D

Its good to know that cooking oil isn't necessarily a bad thingd, just more expensive in the long run. I am still waiting to hear back from my connection about getting some Houghton quench and just what one it is that he can get me from his work place.
 
I have used the same canola oil for about 8 years. I use it for spring making. It has not changed at all.
 
Bill - do you have analysis from 8 years ago and from today? Or at least micrographs from springs across the same span? Or is there some other way of testing if it has changed that I'm not aware of? What are you quenching in it? ATS-34, for example, probably doesn't care.
 
I use 1095 almost exclusively. Occasionally O-1.
Springs aren't breaking, yet. The oil does have more tendency to flare up lately.
Maybe I should change it out-I have a big jug.
 
AcridSaint said:
For the Aussies who don't want to use brine and are having trouble sourcing an oil, it seems that Houghton has an Australian branch. I'd look to them for some Houghto-quench K or perhaps one of their poly quenches.
Click to expand...

Been there done that, again. They only stock very slow speed oils in Aust and you must buy 55gal at a time.
 
Thanks for all the replies guys. I went ahead and used canola oil. Here is a few pics. This is my first "sole authorship" knife.
DSC_5736.jpg

027.jpg

035.jpg

040.jpg

DSC_5757.jpg

DSC_5759.jpg
 
I used preheated olive oil for years, the only time I had to throw it out was when a mouse decided to go swimming and drowned (ewwwww) I got "good" results with the olive oil, and it didn't polymerize like the canola did
Now that I have a 5 gallon bucket of Parks 50 I'm not going back to vegetable oil.

-Page
 
I also used olive oil for many years, on saw blade steel, 01 and 1095. Worked great!

For the last 7 years I've been using Park's 50. I like it better! :D
 
Thanks Don,

Here are is another couple of photos of the blade. Please note that I did not make the sheath. Its from a knife I bought off Michael Morris! I just wanted to use it as a prop! Also I have only taken the blade to a rough 600 as its going to be a user.

DSC_5748.jpg

DSC_5753.jpg

DSC_5754.jpg


Matt
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top