Heat treating with a homemade forge

W

Washburnedout

Joined
Mar 23, 2014
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I recently heat treated a knife made out of 1080 high carbon steel. I am not sure it turned out correctly although I heated it until non magnetic then quenched in canola oil. The file seemed to skate off of it at the time but after tempered it at 425 F for two one hour cycles the file scratches the blade, is this suppose to happen. Is there any other way to test the hardness of the steel. I do not have access to a Rockwell scale tester. Thank you
 
Yes that is the reason for tempering. To relive stress and make it softer. The steel is too hard after a quench to preform well without chipping or breaking. And you really only need 1 temper cycle. Once the core reaches temperature its tempered.
 
Sounds like you did a good job. You can always take a piece of your 1080 steel and run it through your quench process. Lock it in a vise and carefully hit it with a hammer. It should break if you hardened it. This will also allow you to see your grain in the steel.
 
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