Heat treat infor for Aldos' Blue Steel

J

John L

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Oct 28, 2004
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Does anyone have information....graphs, etc... on Aldos' batch of Japanese "blue Steel"? I have a sheet and want to start using it. Thanks.

John Lloyd
 
Stacy should be along to chime in. He knows this steel. Its similar to 52100, but with more carbon. The charts can be downloaded online. IIRC it has an austentize of 1485 to 1490f.
 
1475 with a five minute soak then into parks fifty resulted in a whole bunch of cracks for me. this was blue 2 from japan and not Aldos. same temp and soak into type a Texaco gave me 64- 65 Rockwell. 350 degree temper gave 61 Rc.
 
You guys are way ahead of me, but I do recall Mr Carter using 1490F for the blue steel he uses....and I have no idea (or don't remember which is more likely) what his quenchant choice was. I just received a bar from Aldo today...and some specs listed on the Hitachi sheet itself.....

Carbon 1.13 Silicon 0.16 Mang 0.25 P .013 S .003 Cr .40 W 1.13

The sheet shows they heat treated this sample at 1526F (830C) for 10 minutes into a WQ, assuming that means water quench. And a one hour temper at 356F (180C) Resulting hardness was 64.8HRC. Steel is annealed at 229HBW, approx 21HRC.

Daniel....IIRC Parks 50 is a 7 second oil. Or 7-9 maybe.
 
waterstoneblades said:
The data sheet above is recommending vegetable oil as a quenching medium.
Click to expand...

The data sheet from Dictum does indeed say vegetable oil, while Hitachi says water (brine most likely would be better than straight water). I go with Hitachi!!!! To an extent anyway! Parks 50 should be really good for blue steel.

Just going by carbon and alloy content, I would say if you do use vegetable oil, it probably should be warmed up a bit to 120F or so. It does indeed look like Blue will need a fairly fast quench, not as fast as the White steel maybe, but fast nontheless. For me, the expense of this stuff warrants the best heat treat and quenchant I can throw it's way!
 
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I was reading some old info from Kevin Cashen yesterday about quench mediums. The articles I read stated that canola and vegetable oils were very fast initial quench and then drastically slowed down before the knife blade it to the desired cooling point. Manufactured quenchants, however, did not exhibit thus lag in cooling. They were able to cool quickly and consistently to their desired cooling temp. I was initially going to just get some oil from the grocery, but his articles helped me decide that the performance of my knives are not worth sacrificing on quench medium. I will be ordering some Parks 50 first of the week.
 
I had typed ".....Park's #50 or water....." and deleted it. Water quench is great for this steel.....if you are experienced in water quenching. It isn't for the faint at heart or for those who can not afford some broken blades.
I have had good results in room temp Parks #50 and 1500F austenitization.
 
I would like to try brine or water. Sounds like fun! I plan on making some hunters maybe 9" OAL, if I were quenching a long kitchen blade I would be more concerned.
 
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