First blades back from Peters' Heat Treating, questions re: color?

M

Mawgie

Joined
Nov 14, 2011
Messages
6
Folks,

I am a brand newbie knifemaker. I just sent my first six blades off to Peter's Heat Treating. All are S35VN (from Alpha Knife Supply), and were heat/cryo treated to 61 RC.

Peters' Heat treating was great to deal with. I got the blades back yesterday. They are warp free, which was great, because I was afraid I may have overground them pre heat treat.

Attached is a picture of the six blades, as they looked when I unpacked them. Three questions: 1) is the range of coloration from blade to blade within the range of normal?, 2) before sending them out I thoroughly washed each blade in hot water and Dawn dish soap. I did briefly and lightly handle the blades with bare hands after washing them to get them packed, but they were squeaky clean when I sent them to Peters. Do I need to modify my cleaning/handling routine before sending the blades out for heat treating? 3) Is this heat treating discoloration likely to easily grind out?

Thanks for any input.
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They use vacuum furnace to heat treat every high alloy steel which won't create any oxide due to oxygen free environment. Mostly the color are from tempering stage which will be something like light bronze for normally 350-500F temperature.

Your knives look like have been tempered at 1000F range which is not common for S35VN and got some torch strengthening. These oxide are easy to clean off so don't worry.
 
The marks on the spine may be from a torch being used to straighten the blade
 
Thanks, folks. I'll bare my soul, I mean show you all how they came out, when finished........
 
Normal and as Adam mentioned the colors up around the spine are from fixing warp. For info the shiny spots on the handles are from the RC testing.
 
Straightening for sure. A lot of us do the old 1200-1250 "sub critical" anneal/stress relief to reduce the chance of warping with blades that we HT ourselves, but you may not have that option.
 
I started in on finishing grinding one blade. Like you folks said the blade cleaned up with no trouble at all on my crappy, but at least modded (!) HF 1x30. Thanks.
 
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