easiest to ht?

[nc527]

I am gonna buy some steel soon, and was wondering what steel is easiest to heat treat and temper. Like 1080, 01, w2?

 

[Barkes Knife Shop]

The easiest to heat treat and temper would be 1095. Heat treat at 1500 and temper at 350 for 2 hours. Also, 1080 is great as well. Hope this was of help. God bless and have a nice day.

Terry

 

[go mike]

I've heard good things about 5160.

 

[Keith_H]

I though that 1095 was a little trickier?

 

[mete]

Yes 1095 is trickier. Starter steels are 1075,1080,1084 and 5160.

 

[firebert]

Not trying to be a smart ass, but I found the easiest way is to send it out for heat treat.

 

[Nathan the Machinist]

The trouble is, many steels that are easy on the heat side, are demanding on the quench side, and many of those that are not too picky about the quench are picky about the heating.

For example, 1095 isn't too picky about being heated. It benefits from a brief soak, but a couple minutes is adequate. But the quench speed is very critical, so you're stuck using water (and risking cracks and warping), oil (and risk getting pearlite) or getting a good grade of fast quench oil (and risk, well.. nothing actually)

O1, another "easy" steel is easy to get it to skate a file, and you can quench it in about any oil (I have even used chainsaw bar oil) but it really needs a decent soak at temp. It takes at least five minutes to get all the "stuff" dissolved and evened out. I soak it 15 minutes once it reaches temp.

So, both of these "easy" steels are easy to skate a file, but actually require some skill to do well. Most steel is like this, having some aspect to it that requires skill or equipment to ht well. The exceptions are the low alloy, moderate carbon steels, as already mentioned.

Due to the low alloy and moderate carbon content (which reduced the need to soak) and manganese (which widens the quenching window), 1084 needs no lengthy soak, and any reasonably fast oil is good enough - so I'd say that 1084 may be the easiest to HT.

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

1084...it is the eutictiod. No steel is simpler to HT or to work with.
5160 is a deep hardening alloy steel that is very forgiving of HT errors, making it a second choice for starter steels.
Stacy

 

[sabre]

Crucible's new CruForgeV was designed to be easy to heat treat as well as have improved performance. It is as easy as 5160, which has the best sucess rate for beginners that I know of.

Dan