Good HT article in "Blade".

MrPurple said:
Most people go under the thinking that what worked in the 'old days' was good enough, so they use ATF or veggie oil, etc.
Click to expand...

The advice I have seen given out to us new forum people that are new to Heat-treating any steels, and who are useing 5160 leaf springs does get into the ATF, and Veggie oils stuff, so that part I can see.

I dont really know of any guys who try to quench things like in the "old days' on the forum, do you?
I myself want to learn to forge in the "Old School" style , because I think it's way more fun, but Im always looking for the better ways to Heat-treat and quench to bring out the effects Im looking to reach.
Far as I have seen, every new guy who posts a question about what to quench in is looking for the newest , modern findings of science...

But there is always that point where it does not matter to us what the newest ideas about HT say, if we are talking about steels we dont use, or about tools we dont own..

I mean, it dont really matter to me if I would use steel called "Milkanziode" and heat-treat it with a Plasma bath, that I would get a way better knife blade.
I dont use that steel, and I dont have that tool.

so from this forum, and with the common steel of 5160 I would have to agree that many times I have read the advice given to us new guys that we can get away with the use of ATF or cooking oils...

Is this wrong advice to hand out to a new guy?.....

Im sure that a real quench oil that is made for, and marketed at only 5160 would be way better,,,but is it really all that important for that steel?
 
No, I don't think that's bad advice to give a beginner, though some may advocate starting with a commercial quenchant from the get go. Personally I think there is a lot to be learned by starting out with the simple things at hand like water and or vegetable oils.

I think the main point is to not make statements that may be misleading or mis-representing about how you make your blades. Heck, I'm still using vegetable oils as quenches. Can I make a decent blade with them? Absolutley yes. Can I make the claim that by quenching them in rapeseed oil or peanut oil they are as good as any? Probably not. Other factors like austenitizing temperature and soak times are equally as important, perhaps more so. The quench though, is just a variable in the heat treatment that can easily be reduced to a minimum by using a commercially prepared quenchant. Repeatability is not to be sneered at and I will be trying the commercial quenchants too, quite possibly to wonder why I hadn't done it sooner!
 
The end result of all the HT discussions is - YES, there are many variables.

If the temperature is off a little bit it will affect the blade quality to some degree.If off a lot it may ruin the HT.
If the soak time is too short it may affect the blade quality somewhat to a lot.Too long is not usually a problem if the temperature is right.
If the quenchant is too warm of too cool is may affect the blade quality somewhat,but only a small amount.
If the quenchant is the wrong one if may affect the blade quality somewhat...OR...there may be no quality to the blade.

The most important things are :
Knowing and maintaining the EXACT temperature of the blade during soak.
Soaking for LONG enough to get a full solution of alloy elements.
Knowing (and using) the PROPER quenchant for the metal type.

Mastering these three things will do more to improve blade quality than any other skill you develop.

As far as learning as new makers,I use the same philosophy that applies to training brain surgeons.
LEARN TO DO IT EXACTLY RIGHT, then you can experiment all you want.If it does not work out, you will know what to go back to.

Stacy
 
David, if all you want is to look at what you may have under the microscope for your own uses, then carefully polishing to a 2000X will get you to where you can look between some of the scratches and make out some things. I like to take pictures and share what I find so I continue on from the 2000X to 3000X or 4000X , 8000X up to 14000X in compounds. If you wish to look at the edges in focus it is necessary to set the sample in a resin to keep things crisp. After the finished piece is examined under the microscope for it polish, then the etch is applied. I find a 5% nital solution to work very well and a good bloom will form in seconds. I like acetone for a final rinse agent because I can hit it with a stream of warm air and make it go away with no residue.

I start my examination at 100X and 400X magnification and often see things interesting enough to jump to my 1000X oil immersion. To make out most features 400X is really good. A good metallography text is helpful in getting used to how things should look.

To get into the polishing part I combined two gadgets. I needed one of those power hone units to sharpen my Gravermax gravers but the commercial units were outrageously expensive and very limited in versatility. So I got a dc motor and controller off E-bay for under $350 and set it up with a 6” disk attachment and made a horizontal lapping disk. Now I have a unit that is variable speed and can sharpen the gravers very well and also be used for polishing specimens. I got some inexpensive diamond disks for the coarser grits and the gravers. I have been using felt and leather disks for the pastes but Fitzo gave me a tip on using hard maple disks so I will be working on getting those turned this week. Thank you Fitzo! :thumbup:
 
Alan, a hamon is only possible if you have two different microstructures going on, in your sword project if it is simple steels like 1060 and you are going into water there is little else to form but martensite (steel at its hardest) and pearlite (steel that is quite soft).
So the hamon can clearly show this, but what I can’t show is how much fine pearlite (not so soft stuff) may have creeped into that hardened edge. The fact that such an edge would pass most of the simpler tests show that you can still have an acceptable blade, but it still isn’t the very best it can be. To say it is “good enough” is fine and accurate, to say there is no difference between that and an edge where one completely nailed it is not, and that is the reason for all the fuss.

I would like to apologize for the techno babble I throw around so carelessly, folks may find this hard to believe but I have always found the continuous use of over-technical terms to be annoying and pretentious. But I am caught between a rock and a hard place here, if I discuss these topics in average Joe terms everybody who has ever cracked a textbook will descend on me like there is blood in the water and peck at the minutia until all the meaningful points are lost to their ego boosting knit-picking. I spend more time here than at a forum that I moderate because it has become a victim of its own success in this sense, originally it was intended to answer questions for folks new to these concepts, but now the average guy would get very little out of the hair splitting and knit-picking in threads that stop just short of being nothing but strings of equations and theoretical gobblety-guck. Simple unpretentious terms don’t seem to fly there at all anymore, it is very disappointing.

Also I am painfully aware the I am the king of the two page posts, and that is with the use of efficient and concise terminology, if I had to add simpler explanations every time, no forum would welcome me because of the bandwidth my posts would hog up;). I guess I just make too many assumptions. When I first started discussing these things very few knifemakers could appreciate a $5 word, but that started changing quite quickly and soon ac conversation could be heard at a hammer-in in a language that consisted of words ending with “ite”. That was exciting to see, but here on the internet we forget that new faces pop in continuously to whom it is all Greek, and you are caught between sounding like egghead stuffed shirt, and feeling like you are treating them like a child by oversimplifying things. I know I find it awkward when I get martensite defined for me, but I need to remember that this person doesn’t know me from Adam.
 
Alan Molstad said:
While an interesting 'fact' to know....how would this information ever change anything a knife maker does?...

…I plan to Heat-treat some 1060 steel one day. My guess is that the time needed to get that hard in the quench is about the same, give or take a few seconds correct?

But, so?

…Once we dunk the blade in the quench tank, thats about all a guy can do to speed cooling,,,,blowing on the quench tank is not really going to help much ...

…But then again, once it's in the water or in the oil, thats about all I do from then on...
Far as I know, once the steel is under the water or the oil or whatever, there are no ways to speed the quench given that you only had,,,what?...One second?
Click to expand...

Other folks have covered this so well, I am not sure what more I can add, but you did ask the first part of me initially so I will give what more I can. Knowing this fact should change everything a maker does because it is the “make or break point” of heat treating, if there is one fact to know about your steel in order to successfully harden it, this is it. In simple steels, quenched quickly, you can get martensite (hard) or pearlite (soft) in order to get hard you must cool quickly enough for nothing soft to have time to form at around 1000F. If you don’t you get hard with varying degrees of soft mixed in. Eliminating all the soft without over stressing the steel to cracking and warping is the tightrope act we call heat treating.

Now for 1050 and 1060, if you don’t want to worry about this stuff you should never look at the curves for this steel, since you can forget the 1 second business as you will find it almost impossible not to form some degree of soft when quenching. Here knowing that time to 1000F will help in steel selection if you want 0% soft, as 1070 will get you in the same time range as 1084. It is worth noting that many use the traces of soft in 1050 and 1060 to keep the blade from blowing itself apart in water quenches, so perhaps 100% hard is not what a person is going for in this application.

Now, as for what we can do about the quench speed once we know about this time requirement, aside from the obvious of choosing a more appropriate medium, here is one of those secrets that will help you change the speed after the blade goes under the surface of your current quench- agitation! One can easily double the quench speed of many mediums simply by the rate of agitation, simply holding things still in the liquid leaves you at the mercy of its convective qualities and vapor jacket.

Alan I feel your unhappiness with me has raised a hostility in you for the message provided in these concepts. Please don’t allow that to happen, you have a great start in knifemaking and you can only excel through as much information as you can get your hands on. I have wronged you and I would like to apologize again, so in this case kill the messenger if you need to but please receive the message and give it due consideration. My opinions are nothing, the information is everything.

I dont really know of any guys who try to quench things like in the "old days' on the forum, do you?
Click to expand...
Yes! Scores of them who have taken a much stronger dislike of me than you for having the audacity to suggest that mankind may have developed some better quenching methods in the past 500 years. I have made more enemies for suggesting that a product called “quenching oil” may work better than bucket of lard for “quenching”, than any other concept I have proposed.

Far as I have seen, every new guy who posts a question about what to quench in is looking for the newest , modern findings of science...
Click to expand...
That may be because you have the benefit of seeing the thing I like about this particular forum, the open minded and reasonable people who gather here. Knifemaking at large is filled with people who resent the hell out of science because it suggests why their bucket of potion may work for them but may not be the best method available. I mention fine pearlite a lot; that is because it is responsible for all the folks getting away with using almost anything for a quench. Fine pearlite will form within a hardened edge and give all the impressions of a good quench, and while it will impart toughness, it will always compromise strength. It will give some funky Rockwell readings, you may see it with a microscope but the only way to get rid of it is with a proper quench.
 
Kevin,

You have zero reason to be sorry for anything in this, or any other posts you have so graciously made. People seem to forget sometimes that the giving of your time to share information is not something you have to do.

Folks would be well advised to listen to more technical data coming from Kevin, Mete and countless others. They have made a convert out of me. I thought I would never give up the witchcraft bladesmithing that I did.

Thanks for all the info You freely give Kevin. Oh and If You need a place to stay during Harleys hammer-in. I'm only about 40 minutes from his place , so you could save the cost of a motel and crash here. I wont even pick your brain :D and my Wife is a mean cook.

Mark
 
Kevin, I"ll start where you left off, with Fitzo :) As you were explaining how to prepare the sample I'll have to admit, I was with you until you got to the "resin", and the "oil immersion" (Its funny how fast the mind works & multi-tasks next to even the fastest computer), at that moment I thought "I should have listened just a little better in science" :) and "Fitzo", who, ironically, I am incommunicato with about engraving and "life in general", my friend (and a scientist :) ) ! I understand most everything else, lapping (I use a diprofil, and the many "gadgets","stones" & "compounds" associated with it) and especially the "get a good book" part. As Mark said, and I will second, Thank You ! :thumbup: Thank you for taking the time & effort to educate me today, and so many times in the past. I still reference many of your "two page posts" ;) , and other writings, some are even permanent fixtures on my shop walls. No need to respond to any of this. What you have given me today "I can run with". Again, I Thank You..... Hey Fitzo :D
 
Kevin R. Cashen said:
So the hamon can clearly show this, but what I can?t show is how much fine pearlite (not so soft stuff) may have creeped into that hardened edge.
Click to expand...
Always in the back of my mind, there is this dream I have of learning how to make a katana...
How to forge it, how to heat-treat it, how to apply the clay to it...

I know thats another whole topic, but I believe I am to aim to get some of that 'soft stuff" down into the hard steel of the cutting edge.

From what I understand, when you coat the blade with the thick clay, you also drag some of the thicker clay down into the cutting edge.

I guess the reason is so that your final cutting edge is a mix of mostly very hard forms of steel, and every once in a while some very soft forms of steel.

Now for a knife?....Im not sure.
The idea of designing a cutting edge with a bit of the softer form of steel mixed in it?
Im not sure thats going to work out.
But it might be interesting to see who has tried to do this mixing ...to see the resulting hamon and what it tells us.

Then, what about going the other way too?
Bringing some of the hard steel up into the normaly soft-steel spine area of my knife ?.....
Wally Hayes does this in his KATANA video where he scrapes the spine of his sword free of clay and wants the steel there to harden.

And this gets me to them video clips of that one guy talking about steels and how they flex and how they fail.http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=440355&page=5
He compares the two forms of steel at the far ends of the scale:...totally soft, and totally hard.

the totally soft steel will start out and flex like any steel, but will bend way too early to be trusted as a knife....thus any knife made with totally 100% soft steel is a crappy knife in my view.

Then at the other end of the scale we got a totally hard steel that will not bend until just before it snaps, again this would make another crappy knife.

My view of things, would be for me to learn how to get up that scale of hardness(and thereby usefullness) without drawing too darn close to that point where I run into the snapping danger.

It seems to me that if thats the way the two far ends of the scale act, that the best path to walk down would be to somehow get as far up the hardness scale as I can go , applying clay, useing a O/A torch, (or whatever), that would allow my final knives or katana to bring out the better effects of both the soft form of steel, and the hard form of steel....avoiding the troubleing far ends....
 
YW, Kevin! I take it my email response made it back to you! :) I hope the maple works well for your needs.

David, hello! :) Since Kevin's not logged in, I'll try to explain those two terms. When he mentioned resin, I *think* he is talking about setting the sample in an epoxy or polyester so that it can be prepared in the proper orientation for viewing, held onto to polish, lay flat on the microscope table, etc. To be honest, I don't know what's used today. When I did this (35 years ago) we still used Bakelite! Mete will remember setting samples in Bakelite, too, I'm sure. Technology has passed that by, I'm sure.

"Oil immersion" means that a drop of special oil is added between the sample and the lens, sort of "goo-ing" the two together. 1000 power brings the lens extremely close to the sample piece, and the oil somehow lends to making the lens itself.

Hopefully that will give you an idea until Kevin or someone can better explain.
 
Kevin R. Cashen said:
I have made more enemies ....
Click to expand...


Kevin , I dont know,
Im new to this forum, I have not posted as many times as others, I have not read every single new post.

But it sure seems to me reading the many posts from other new guys like myself with a question about what type of oil to use for quench oil, that the question is mostly concerning the quench of two steels;
Knives made from files or 5160.

As for what type of oil to use with a file?
The answers you get are always the same. People always answer that it's hard to know what type of oil to use because a file could be made of many different forms of steel , etc, etc, etc,...
(Thats always the answer, every time)

But as for 5160, yes, you do find suggestions from well known knife guys who speak of cooking oils, or ATF, or mineral oils or even the fat of animals,,,
But, so what?
The thing with a steel like 5160 is that most everything thats suggested will work...perhaps some oil is better that others, ,,,but again, so what?

It's not very helpfull to tell a guy starting out on his first few blades that any quench oil except for "ZalCon 2000 speed-quench" (sold only in 55 gal drums for $1,200) is pointless and he should not even try to heat-treat his first blades unless he wants to learn to do it right the first time.....
because if you tell a new guy that it is the same as telling him to "Forget it, give it up now before you make a fool of yourself"

Yes, People do like what has worked for them in the past.
It's human nature to try to stick with the things we know work over any suggestion for a new way.

But I think that most of the new guys who are posting about what types of oil to use, are very interested in learning whats the new, current ideas and findings of science about quench oils....

I also think that any advice people have about new ways to do stuff, or new oils to use with this-or-that steel, should just try to keep in mind that the old ideas, (for all their flaws we may see), yet they did work,
Perhaps not as well as we would want now,
Perhaps not every time,
But they did work...

Dunking some steels in goat piss did get them hard.
And at one point in our history, "goat piss" was state-of-the-art science...

We laught at it now, because we think we know better.
But wisdom tells us that in a few years our children and grand children will be laughing at us and our "old ways" too....
 
Mark Williams said:
Kevin,

You have zero reason to be sorry for anything in this, or any other posts you have so graciously made. People seem to forget sometimes that the giving of your time to share information is not something you have to do.

Folks would be well advised to listen to more technical data coming from Kevin, Mete and countless others. They have made a convert out of me. I thought I would never give up the witchcraft bladesmithing that I did.

Thanks for all the info You freely give Kevin. Oh and If You need a place to stay during Harleys hammer-in. I'm only about 40 minutes from his place , so you could save the cost of a motel and crash here. I wont even pick your brain :D and my Wife is a mean cook.

Mark
Click to expand...
When is Harley's hammer-in this year? I can only aspire to engage in any type of bladesmithing, be it witchcraft. scientific or otherwise......I have trouble getting as passionate as Kevin about the stuff because much of the time, my smithing time is spent getting pissed at another one of my titanic screw ups...lol. Keep writing, brother!!!!!!
 
Thank you Fitzo :thumbup: . That list of questions is growing fast, almost exponentially ;) . Mark, although I enjoyed StarTrek, I think I must have missed that episode :)
 
Alan Molstad said:
tions from well known knife guys who speak of cooking oils, or ATF, or mineral oils or even the fat of animals,,,
But, so what?
The thing with a steel like 5160 is that most everything thats suggested will work...perhaps some oil is better that others, ,,,but again, so what?

It's not very helpfull to tell a guy starting out on his first few blades that any quench oil except for "ZalCon 2000 speed-quench" (sold only in 55 gal drums for $1,200) is pointless and he should not even try to heat-treat his first blades unless he wants to learn to do it right the first time.....
because if you tell a new guy that it is the same as telling him to "Forget it, give it up now before you make a fool of yourself"

We laught at it now, because we think we know better.
But wisdom tells us that in a few years our children and grand children will be laughing at us and our "old ways" too....
Click to expand...



There are a thousand posts describing the 'old method' heat treats for 5160 and such. NO ONE says it won't work. What they ARE saying is that, with the right understanding and the right materials, you can make a better knife. That's the same as telling someone to just forget it? Sounds like that's what was read INTO that, because any time I've been shown a better way that's proven to me, I'm moving forward! I don't want to know that what's 'just okay' is fine, I want to know how I can make the BEST knife I can. It IS very helpful to tell a new guy that, instead of using animal fat as a quenchant, he'll get much better results with a material designed specifically for it (which for me, btw, was a whopping $34 including shipping, NOT $1200!). In fact, I started with 1095, and using the 'old methods' NEVER got a proper heat treatment. How the heck would NOT knowing about a proper quenchant have helped me? Because of the advice on these forums, I've got a pretty firm grip on the fundamentals of the science behind the performance.

I don't laugh at the wisdom of the ages, for the record. I'm more interested in finding out WHY it's wisdom. That is the real quest for knowledge.

You've used the phrase "so what?" a handful of times in the post above. If that's your outlook, why are you continuing in this direction? The reason this thread started was to educate[I] those that wished to read it[/I] on how to improve the performance of their metalwork through an understanding of what's going on in the process. If you're interested in maintaining the methods of the ancients, there's TONS of guys doing it (check out just about anything under the topic of neo-tribal knifemaking).

Please keep this thread on topic! The 'new guy' will have the drive built into him to slog through the hard stuff until he finds his own level of understanding.
 
On the "methods of the ancients" thing, my first teacher JD Smith was always very quick to point out that the "ancients" were using the highest tech stuff they had. And they were always experimenting, borrowing, etc. (There is a reason just about every "traditional" Japanese smith uses a power hammer today.) If the "ancients" had the same retrograde attitude as some today we might all be arguing over the best method of flint knapping. "No, I don't need no dang bronze knife. Obsidian was good enough for my daddy, so it's good enough for me!"

John
 
Alan Molstad: ...And this gets me to them video clips of that one guy talking about steels and how they flex and how they fail.http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/sh...=440355&page=5
He compares the two forms of steel at the far ends of the scale:...totally soft, and totally hard.

the totally soft steel will start out and flex like any steel, but will bend way too early to be trusted as a knife....thus any knife made with totally 100% soft steel is a crappy knife in my view.

Then at the other end of the scale we got a totally hard steel that will not bend until just before it snaps, again this would make another crappy knife.
Click to expand...

Alan, I would suggest that you watch the video I posted again. That "guy talking" is Tim Zowada and he was explaining how the Modulus of Elasticity applies to knife steels. You correctly understood that unhardened steel will flex at the same rate as hardened steel, but will bend and take a set far too easily to be useful as a knife (beside the fact that it wouldn't hold an edge).

You missed the point about the full hardened blade, however. Tim said that if you heat treat a blade properly and get it as close to 100% Martensite as possible, the blade will be so strong that you will not be able to bend it by hand. If you used a cheater bar you would finally be able to flex the blade. With enough force that blade would eventually snap instead of bending and taking a set. The point is that if you want the strongest blade you can possibly make, harden it fully. You won’t be able to bend it, but you won’t be able to break it by hand either. Therefore, it certainly wouldn’t be a “crappy knife.”

If you can bend your blade by hand, you either intentionally or unintentionally mucked with the heat treatment. If you intentionally played with the heat treatment by claying your blade to get a cool hamon, that's great. If you unintentionally screwed up the heat treatment, that's not so great. Tim suggested that Bladesmiths acquire a thorough understanding of the heat treating process. Then, once they know how to properly heat treat a particular steel, they can make informed decisions regarding that heat treatment, and choose the qualities they want in their blades.

When reading your posts I get the impression (perhaps incorrectly) that you don't like the answers that you have been receiving. Kevin Cashen, in particular, has gone out of his way to share his vast knowledge with you. He presents you with facts, not opinions, and you seem to get annoyed. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.

This particular forum is a great place to learn about the technical aspects of Bladesmithing. There are a core of knowledgeable veterans willing to educate the rest of us, but if you don't agree with what they have to say, simply employ your "so what" technique and ignore them. Make your blades however you choose. They are, after all, your blades, and no one here will be offended if you do things your own way.
 
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