Hardness Tester

[Whit]

How many of you use a hardness tester to check your heat treating? I was wondering if the small "portable hardness testers" are ok for this? Do you need the big $1000 one? I don't know much about them.

 

[peter nap]

I use a file!

 

[Gib Guignard]

File works for me on carbon steel, SS I send to Mr, Paul
and he does it all including a hardness test. Gib

 

[Bruce Bump]

I use one. It is at the college here and I use it all the time for stuff. It is interesting to see which methods work. I have also tested Paul Bos blades. He is right on everytime according to the college tester.

 

[WinDancer]

I bought a set of special hardness testing files for about a hundred. MSC or Enco, can't remember which.
You start at the bottom and work your way up until the file bites- and they are marked so you can set the hardness range with good accuracy. A lot of money, but it sure beats those $700 units all hollow.

Dave

 

[CJM]

i purchased one of those large shop style hardness testers finally after several years of trying to guess with the file sets- i could never tell if the file was biting or just scratching the surface, as it turned out the "interpretation" was not that far off- there were no surprises when i tested blades that i still had around.it seems to me that the heat treatment is the most important evolution of the steel and knowing that it is right for the type of steel makes the performance predictable and repeatable.hardness testing is the easiest way to tell if your heat treatment is good.for me it was money well spent. did i really need it? probably not, since the files seemed to be close,but it has raised the accuracy of my work and that gives me some satisfaction.

 

[B . Buxton]

I might be out of line here, but I don't see the need for hardness testers, maybe there needed in the use of stainless, I don't know, but I haven't seen the need for them in the high carbon steels I use,5160,1095,L-6 and 52100. After I edge quench my blades I always check with a fairly new file to make sure the file won't bite, and if you stick 1 in a vise it will snap like a dry twig. To me the most important hardness tester is the brass rod after the blades been drawn, to soft and the blade won't hold an edge and recover from the bend, to hard and it will chip, crack or break if used hard, and very difficult to resharpen. To me it doesn't matter what hardness you get when you quench, a RC of 58 or 65 because you have to draw that hardness back out to get a good, strong and working blade. So what good does it do me to get a blade to harden to RC62 if its going to be drawn to a hardness that will perform the brass rod test before it leaves my shop which might be Rc 57. I guess it would be good to be able to tell the customer the hardness of the blade, but all I've sold to, don't care about the hardness, they just want a good strong blade that will hold an edge well and resharpen fairly easy when it needs it. Again I don't mean to step on any toes, because we all have our own ideas and techiques, but I believe people have a tendency to make something hard out of something simple, learn to use your heat treating techiques properly every time and test your blades, that will tell you if your doing things right.
PLEASE don't get POed at me, this is just my simple minded opinion.

Bill