- Joined
- Sep 27, 2004
- Messages
- 3,041
Heat treated my first big blade tonight. 12" OAL, 7" blade. I made it out of 3/16" O-1 Toolsteel.
Grinding went remarkably well. I did a full flat grind pre-ht. The O-1 ground like butter....so smooth....the KMG ate it up. I fired up the forge IG made me at the hammerin. On a cold snowy night I was blasting the inferno. The forge really performed. I closed off the back with soft firebricks and closed most of the opening in the front and let er rip with the venturi sidearm burner. I had to turn it way down so that I wasn't at welding temps!
I got a nice even heat, normalized twice, and started my rhythmic dance between the kitchen checking temps on my oil and the porch checking temps and evenness on my blade. I am a loser, havent found an easier way in my setup....
Got it to nonmagnetic, soaked it a bit, and got a nice even flash as I quenched. Tempered twice at two hours and to my amazement I had almost zero scale, zero pitting on the blade. My ht was almost the same as normal but im usually working in 1095 and the O-1 was far easier....
After putting a quick 200 grit finish on it and getting edge down pretty close to final thickness, I did some testing. Chopped some 2X4s with the unsharpened edge and could chip out nice big hunks...then I did some damage testing and decided to see now what I had done so took a light swing at the unharded body of my vice (dumb...wha-eva!) I was pretty happy to se a nice 1/8" gouge in the vice and no trace whatsoever on the blade that it even came in contact with anything.
Overall, the O-1 is a new favorite!
I'll have pics soon....
Grinding went remarkably well. I did a full flat grind pre-ht. The O-1 ground like butter....so smooth....the KMG ate it up. I fired up the forge IG made me at the hammerin. On a cold snowy night I was blasting the inferno. The forge really performed. I closed off the back with soft firebricks and closed most of the opening in the front and let er rip with the venturi sidearm burner. I had to turn it way down so that I wasn't at welding temps!
I got a nice even heat, normalized twice, and started my rhythmic dance between the kitchen checking temps on my oil and the porch checking temps and evenness on my blade. I am a loser, havent found an easier way in my setup....
Got it to nonmagnetic, soaked it a bit, and got a nice even flash as I quenched. Tempered twice at two hours and to my amazement I had almost zero scale, zero pitting on the blade. My ht was almost the same as normal but im usually working in 1095 and the O-1 was far easier....
After putting a quick 200 grit finish on it and getting edge down pretty close to final thickness, I did some testing. Chopped some 2X4s with the unsharpened edge and could chip out nice big hunks...then I did some damage testing and decided to see now what I had done so took a light swing at the unharded body of my vice (dumb...wha-eva!) I was pretty happy to se a nice 1/8" gouge in the vice and no trace whatsoever on the blade that it even came in contact with anything.
Overall, the O-1 is a new favorite!
I'll have pics soon....
Lookin' forward to seeing the shape of that bad boy.
