Heat treating

[POLISHER]

Hi - I really don’t have any experience with the forum but I am wondering if someone may have some experience with some unorthodox heat treating methods that may save me some hours of testing? It is okay if you don’t. I am somewhat familiar with the standard ways and do not have a Rockwell Tester or a temperature controlled oven.

To start with in no particular order: Why is it generally said that one can only Case Harden Low carbon steel. Everything that I read seems to say that I can’t take say a typical 1.0 % carbon steel knife blade and instill some more carbon with the normal case hardening methods.

And, why is it not possible to take an old file with maybe 1.4 % carbon or like metal and anneal, make my blade, harden, and temper as normal with less of a hardness of file-like? I.e., temper to a nice tough knife blade.

And, is it possible to shorten the steps in blade making by doing the normal annealing, making the blade and then instead of doing the normal full hardening, heat up to something less than full cherry red and quench? Is this not normally done only because it is not as controllable and predictable, or just that it doesn’t work that way?

Has anyone experimented with the clay-coating that I see in the Samurai Sword making to get the two different toughness’ of the blade?

And, has anyone had any luck with hardening a blade by heating with a regular Oxy-Acetylene torch and lowering into the quenching liquid as it gets to the cherry-red?

And, is there a method of determining a usable relative hardness without a Rockwell Tester?
Any feed-back from your experiences would be appreciated.

If I had a better handle on these things, it would help in answering a bunch of my other questions.

 

[viral]

Check out the stickies first of all. Now I'll touch on some of your questions.
You can anneal a file work it then harden and temper. It does work. It works all the time. No you can't shorten the steps in hardening a blade while achieving good results. The clay coating forms a Hamon, look that up but its not really a beginner thing to worry about. Rockwell files, or guessing. I usually just skate a few files and call it good.
You can use an ocy acetylene, get some 1084 from Aldo's New Jersey steel baron and it will be far easier for you to achieve good results.
Read stickies

 

[Jemblade]

You should be able to use a torch for some steels like 1084 that are much simpler to work with than steels like 1095 which require soak times at specific tempratures. These are the 2 I have experience with. My first knife was in 1095 and I wish I had never screwed with it... I think it is worth mentioning again, read the stickies...