Damascus Heat Treat Problems AGAIN!!

S

Shotgunone

Joined
Oct 1, 2000
Messages
244
My real Question is does Thunderforge damascus Suck? :barf:

or do I just not know what I am doing?

I made a blade. Left it a little thicker after grinding than I normally do ats34. Heated in my oven to 1450 degrees. Qinched in warm oil (olive oil I was told is excellent) about 140 degrees. And while cleaning it up and thinning down. There it was. :mad:

A stinking, *(&%%^()(&*$%#%^&*(), crack about middle of the blade, running from the edge up to the center of the blade. First I thought will it's just scale. Not. This is the second attempt at a blade with this damacus and the second cracked blade.

I don't know if it's me or the thunderforge!
 
Normalize? Not sure what you mean. Stainless Steel has been my Steel of choice.

I wrapped the blade in heat treat foil. Put in cold oven. Brought up to 800 degrees soaked then increased to 1450. Removed blade from oven. Quenched in Olive oil foil and all. Took blade out still very warm. Checked for straightness and straightened the tip some. Put back in the oven at 1450. for about 20 minutes and then rapid point down quench in oil again. Didn't find the crack until I started final grind after tempering. Crack is not near the tip where I did the straightening.

So how do you normalize damascus and why? Thanks for your help in advance.
 
Shotgunone,

You are not the first to complaine about welding flaws in Thunderforge Damascus. Most likely the crack you spoke of is a welding flaw. You did not cause this it was in the steel when you bought it.

Several things you say about your heat treat are suspect. Thunderforge is a 1095 and Nickel damascus so it is not heat treatable in stainless foil. The foil acts as a thermal barrier preventing the steel from getting below the critical temp needed to get a good heat treat. Something that complicates this furthur is 1095 generally is a water hardening steel because of its low manganese content which means you have even less time to get the steel below the critical temp. This damascus being 1095 and Nickel should be put into an oven that has been preheated to 1500 and held there for no more that 5 min. Im curious as to why you would preheat to 800 and then bump up to 1450? I can under stand the double quench as many blade smiths do this to refine the grain but why hold for 20 min, normally this would cause grain growth resulting in an inferior heat treat.

 
If this is really a 1095/pure nickel mix i can understand why people may have problems with this pattern welded steel.
Pure nickel and carbon steel are difficult to weld to each other anyway and if you do a high layer count and due to scaling and burning get a spot where nickel touches nickel, you are in BIG trouble, because this won't stick. Been there, done that.
I would suggest to stay away from pure nickel pattern welded steel unless the maker gives you a full return garanty. Plus, this material is NOT suited to make a cutting edge because nickel won't harden. Go looking for someone who's using tool steels with high nickel content in his pattern welded steel.

Achim
 
My heat treating is suspect cause I don't know what I am doing :D .

I put it in foil to keep decarb down. Stopped at 800 cause I don't know why. Trying to help relieve stress and keep warpage to a minimum I guess. I was trying to bring up to temperature slowly again to prevent warpage and "CRACKING" :mad: I guess. Quenched in foil the first time to get the blade down to handling temp and so I could straighen as needed. Then back in the oven, no foil wrap this time, at 1450 degrees. I said 20 minutes but I meant for both heating combined maybe 10 minutes at 1450 each time. The reason for oil (olive oil) was because I had used brine water on the first blade and got a crack in it then. Somebody suggested the olive oil because crack maybe caused by rapid cooling in brine water.

I am just trying to figure out if this is my fault or that Thunderforge is crappy stuff. I spent about 60 dollars plus all my time, and all I got to show for it was a pair of bolsters, but no blades. I have been told that TF is not very good stuff by several other makers. But I still have a lot to learn so I'll take some blame, if it is mine.

Thanks
 
Normalize is releaving the stresses built up by grinding and forging before heat treating. The pros have all sorts of rituals they use but being a dumb old mountain fellow, I just heat it to non-mag and let it cool at room tempature. I used to crack a lot of blades untill I started doing this.

While you may well have "bad steel" I suspect it may be your heat treating. One quench that I use a lot is cooking oil. Something thick like crisco. It works better for me then anything else I've tried.
There are a lot of very talented people here. Someone will know for sure.
 
Personally I would not use TF damascus. Ive had nothing but trouble with it. It has 1095 and o1 plus the nickel added for contrast. The 1095 is brine quench while the o1 is oil quench. If you quench in oil the blade is too soft, if you quench in brine the blade is too hard and will crack or break while trying to straighten it. It comes to you from TF with alot of stress and large grain. It hasnt been normalized. They dont tell us that when they sell it to us. Im one that tryed to get warrenty and they said no. They said Im only about the 5th person to ever have any trouble from over 6,000,000 bars they have sold. Never again!
 
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