Heat treating 1080 steel

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I have been making knives for about 2 years now and i have buying precut blanks or sending out my steel for heat treating. I recently built a small forge to treat my own metal and i have received some 1080 steel for blades. I have read about treating the 440c steel i have but i was wondering if the process for 1080 is different. Thanks.
 
welcome to BladeForums! I am still new to knife making so im not going to answer your question, but yes they are different. Keep an eye out for 12345678910 to post a standard reply with a ton of links that will help.

welcome!


-Xander
 
Much simpler. Basically, after normalizing three times you just bring it up to temp and then quench.
For the actual hardening, bring it up to 1450 or a bit higher and then quench. Assuming you are judging by eye this is between red and bright red, but NOT orange. If you start seeing orange you went too far. Not the end of the world with 1080, but worth avoiding. Someone else can chime in as to how far you can slip before it's a real issue, I'm just not sure.
An easy way to judge the temp is to figure out what shade it is when it goes non magnetic by testing regularly. Once you have a feel for the shade you're getting when that happens you want just a shade brighter for 1080. There is no need for a soak time.

Quench can be as simple as some canola oil. A fairly fast oil like Park 50 is good if buying real quench oil. Don't use water or brine. (edit- correction, listen to Kevin's page not me, water and brine for thick stuff, fast oil for thin stuff. I have only done thinner so I didn't think about that aspect.)

There's a bunch of threads around here on this, including the ones where I picked up everything above when I started out. We've got some real experts here and they get credit for everything above, any mistakes are just me remembering incorrectly.
 
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