Heat Treat With Borax

[Dan Gray]

Hi Peter
in the freezer?
what are you using to freeze with?
and what steel are you using?


Roger I just mentioned it so you could find
more reading about it.

 

[peter nap]

Liquid Nitrogen and 5160. I'm trying it for 12 hours as suggested. I've never left one in this long before. I'm kinda interested to see if it makes a big difference. It's going to be a long night. Comes out of the freeze at 1:00 AM, Triple temper for 2 hours each and I guess I'll start work about 9:00 Am. :barf:

 

[Dan Gray]

Peter
let me know if it helps.
I know one thing right now ...
I'm going to get more sleep than you are tonight..

 

[Bart student]

Hey Peter..


Why don't you make a steel container, put it in your gasforge turned up and fill that with borax (or regular kitchensalt), let it melt, and when molten (orange) dip your blanks in that, leave in for like 2 minutes and quench.... You can control the temp of the molten salt by adding borax for lower temp and carbonate for higher temp if you'r using NaCl aka kitchensalt.

Zero scale, and your blade has been vacuum hardened, because no air or any other gas has been in contact the whole time. Works on stainless too ( I do my D2 and 440B this way and I get a flexing edge on D2 at HRC 60). wire wheel and clean blade.. not even surface decarb... works great for me if I wanna do zero edges.

greetz and take care, bart

 

[SamaraVolk]

Hey Peter,

I used to boil water and borax and dip my blades in it and let dry before heat treating, but found it a lot easier and better to leave quite a bit over sized, then heat treat, then grind to finished shape with a new 50 grit belt and then go straight to a new 400 grit, just like steve johnson does it, I stop there and go to hand sanding because I'm doing mostly flat grinds off a platen, but if your doing hollow grinds off a softer wheel, he says you can take them to a mirror finish with just a couple of cork belts and the buffer. His tutorial is on CKD, several say it works great.

Bill

You have gone straight to 400 from 50? This would be a Godsend for me. Any particular backing on the 400 grit belt? Thanks

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

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[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

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