Hard spots in stainless

E

elementfe

Joined
May 3, 2008
Messages
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I'd been looking forward to working with CPM 154, and was very surprised yesterday when I went to cut out a blade blank and hit a hard spot and ruined a bandsaw blade. There was a sort of little streak across the piece, and a new blade wouldn't cut it, either. Ended up cutting through that part with a disk.

Kind of surprising, I thought this steel would be totally consistent considering how it's made...
Do you-all anneal stainless stock before working with it?
I'm 2 for 3 now, I got some of Aldo's 440c a while back and hit a spot that couldn't be drilled and set a blade aside to eventually anneal. (any suggestions on annealing?)

How common is this? It's something I expect to deal with in Damascus, that 15n20 can be a booger that way, but with what stainless stock costs, it's kind of surprising!
Thanks,
Andy G.
 
Interesting. I've been working almost exclusively with CPM 154, and have never really encountered this, especially with the steel I've gotten from Aldo. I would also look into how you're cutting the steel - you might be work-hardening it by going to fast/slow.
 
Another thing that can happen with band saws is a tooth or more strips off and embeds itself in the work piece. Then when you try to keep sawing in that spot you are actually hitting those teeth and just keep destroying more teeth.
 
Thanks, good reminders to watch the feed and broken tooth issues, but I wasn't seeing either one yesterday. Are these two steels particularly vulnerable to work hardening?

Andy
 
I've had to be a bit careful with it with lower TPI blades, but I find that when I use a sharp 24TPI bi-metal blade, I don't really have any work hardening issues. I don't think they're any more susceptible to work hardening than anything else, but I wouldn't really know either...
 
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