First successful blade ready for heat treat.

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This is a chisel ground, .125 chunk of O1 done $50 knife shop style. I feel accomplished making a blade with files, but I'm ordering a 2x72 grizzly next week!! Any tips or tricks for heat treating this stuff? I plan on using my homemade charcoal forge to do the heating.

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I would suggest drilling your pin holes and whatnot prior to heat treat. As far as heat treat, I can't help you there, I'm learning as well.
 
The charcoal forge will make it interesting for 01. Heat the blade to 1475 1500 soak for 5 or 6 minutes, try to maintain this temp; quench in medium speed oil heated to 125 to 150. Temper at 400fh for a hrc of 60 or 61; 450 for 59 to 60. Temper twice for two hours each time.

It will help to stabilize the blade if you can soak a bit at 1200 to 1250, 01 likes stress relief. Follow stress relief by normalizing the blade. Normalizing 01 is done at 1600 and under in order to reduce grain structure.

As I said doing this heat treat is a challenge using a charcoal forge, but these figures give you something to shoot for.

Good luck, Fred
 
Have you put an edge on the blade yet? If you have, you need to file/grind it back to to where the edge is roughly half the thickness of a dime. Otherwise you risk overheating the edge and damaging it or warping the blade.
 
I put the edge on on to get rid of a knick i put in it doing some Espada y Daga stuff with a friends Ginunting. I took a little too much off the handle, too. I took the edge back down immediately.

I had planned on letting it get good and hot for about 5 minutes tomorrow and letting it cool with the coals, then doing the heat treat Saturday. Im guessing I have to do the soak by the color. How bright/dull of a red should I soak at? I play around with steel when I blacksmith, so I can keep it at a temperature pretty easy. I just need to know the right one.
 
Lissen!!! This is your first knife do it EXACTLY how YOU think it should be done. Don't lissen to NOBODY!! The ONLY advice that you should follow is: DON'T LOOSE IT OR GET RID OF IT!!! KEEP IT!!! If you read enough and research enough and beat your brains out enough eventually you will throw you're early books in the trash in disgust. But that comes later. I LIKE your knife. I was once where you are. I honestly hope and believe that you will enjoy your journey. But hear me out on just this one thing: Making knives is a dangerous and destructive habit that will cost you money and a LOT of frustrations. Your friends and family will not understand. Making knives is easily as bad as golf and motorcycles and bird hunting. Fortunately it is easy now to find addicts like yourself that can assist you in your madness. I will leave you with something that a man down in Mississippi once lamented to me: I for evermore wish that I could get the price of bobwhite quail down below $500 a pound. And so it follows that I wish that I could get the price of a knife that I could have bought at Wal * Mart for five bucks down below $250. Nicholas Jasper, PE
 
You have O1 steel and a coal forge... forget about soaking unless you want to rig up a muffle pipe which complicates things even more. That said, O1 needs to be soaked for full potential. So you have to get creative and hope you get lucky.

You don't want to over heat and get grain growth. My suggestion is to make the best with what you have.

Do this in a darkened shop or at night. Keep the blade edge up and moving(don't let it sit in the fire)
- Heat to bright red, let air cool to black
- Heat to red(a bit past nonmagnetic... maybe a 7-10 count), quench in warm oil(130F)
- Heat to dull red(just as the blade goes nonmagnetic), quench in warm oil(130F)
- Heat to where you begin to see slight red colour(twice) and let air cool to room temperature

Now, you can drill your holes for your handle... the blade will be soft and set up for a decent HT. When it is time for final HT...

- Slowly heat the blade(edge up) to dull red(just at nonmagnetic). Take it out of the fire and watch the colour even out. Put it back into the fire.
- Heat to red(past nonmagnetic, 7-10 count) and quench in warm oil(130F)
- Throw it in a preheated oven at 400F for 2hrs.... twice. You can water quench between cycles.

In my opinion, this is making lemonade out of lemons. Now... instead of trying to find out why I do it this way, go pick up some 1084 steel to make your next knife.:p


Have fun!!!

Rick
 
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If you buy the Grizzly, be aware that the motor is 3450 rpm, which is too fast to do anything but rough grind, especially if you are a beginner. I bought one and ended up selling it a month later. I strongly recommend you get a grinder with variable speed - I think that is what most knife makers use.

Tim
 
tim37a said:
If you buy the Grizzly, be aware that the motor is 3450 rpm, which is too fast to do anything but rough grind
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The Grizzly is all I've ever used and I have never burnt out a hardened blade. It's a nice little machine that is easily modified.
 
Nothing wrong with using a fast grinder, I use a HF 1x30 myself. Only time I've ever burnt an edge is when I sharpened a really thin kitchen knife with a lot of nicks and stayed on the tip for too long(probably two seconds).
 
Thanks for the info guys!! I'm toying with sending this one for a pro heat treat, just so I don't ruin the first knife. I have some .25 inch thick 1084 that I tried to file, but its just too damn thick for that!! I will finish it out on the grinder.

As far as the grizzly goes, I don't feel like I am worthy of anything with variable speed. How did craftsmen make blades before variable speed? I gotta pay my dues somewhere. I am mainly interested in smithing, anyway... It's just such a pain in the ass when it gets cold. I want to learn stock removal so I can take a break from smithing from time to time. Getting down to the last little bit of forging, and ruining your piece after hours over a coal forge gets discouraging at times. I hope the grinder is more forgiving.
 
I don't mean to hijack my own thread, but these "wildertools" Are pretty damn awesome! I need to know how you forged a k-bit!!
 
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