Hey Mete - 1045

R

rlinger

Joined
Mar 29, 2002
Messages
4,591
A fellow called me and asked me to HT a blade he forged from chain. He said the vendor told him it was 1095. After he tried to HT it he had a piece analysed. It came back as 1045 (0.47% carbon). I told him I'd do what I could. What do you think? and can I get away with tempering it at about 350 F?

Thanks.

RL
 
I don't have the knowledge to help you, just my two cents (and they could be wrong :) ) I think 1050 is the limit to "high carbon," but it also has a range of .48 - .55 carbon content (I think). To me, that's pretty damn close and I think you could make it work. What do you plan to quench in?
 
Yes I,m here hiding from the thunderstorms.When they make cheap gears from 1045 the microstructure starts out as about half the grains ferrite an half pearlite. When you harden it ,often with flame hardening , you end up with the ferrite staying as ferrite and the pearlite changing to martensite.In plain english you can harden it but it won't be very hard and I would use water as it needs all the help it can get.
 
Okay Mete, and thanks - I'll use water. Brine? How warm should I preheat the water quench to?

Thanks.

RL
 
I don't think you'll need to heat the water ,I'm not sure you need the brine.
 
Maybe make up a batch of superquench? If I remember right one of the formulas is dawn, jet dry, and salt with water. It should harden things below the cusp of good hardening because the additives break up the vapor jacket and allow it to cool even faster then water or plain brine.
 
Thanks AWP. I do appreciate your helping but I'm going strickly with Mete on this and home concoctions are not for blades not belonging to me.

Mete, can I get away with tempering at about 350 F on this steel or should I stay with 400 F?

Thanks.

RL
 
That's understandable, especially since it's someone elses blade you don't want to take any chances. Maybe in the future you'll find the superquench useful for something else.
 
Well, I water quenched her a few minutes ago. The water quench was at room temperature and had no salt added. Not a lot of time to examine before the next step but all seems well as far as cracking and warping goes. I am sure there should be some warp but not outstanding enough to notice without closer examination. As soon as reaching room temperature after quench I placed into deep cryo. Cryo probably won't help her but since I've got it I did it. Tomorrow I will temper at 350 F and see what she reads. I do hope for greater than 50. We'll see.

Thanks a bunch Mete for advising me. I got her into quench no greater than 1 second from soak. I soaked at 1500 F 6 minutes and prior to that did a 7 minute preheat at 1210 F before ramping to austenitizing.

As a side note: since it was forged I first normalized at 1600 F twice.

RL
 
RL...where did you sent the steel to get it analysed? IS it costly?
 
Water quench ? when I commented before about hiding from thunderstorms- we got over 6" of rain thursday !!...The martensite that forms with low carbon steel is different from that of high carbon. There is much less problem of cracking or warping.There would certainly be no benefit from cryo.
 
I should have sent it to you Mete for you to hold out the window in that rain storm. It went all the way up to 25 - 26 HRc. No Can Do.

RL
 
Mete, Please explain. I just finished a Hawk made in the rap around method from 1050 which is not much different than 1045. I heated the cutting edge 1" wide in the forge and quenched in AFT/hyd oil 50/50 mix then tempered in the oven at 450deg for 3 hr. After sharpening it has a good edge that a dull file skates on and a sharp file barley cuts, not very scientific but will tell me where I am for hardness. What gives according to the info above this should not work but this hawk is a good chopper. Gib
 
I'm a little confused here. I would have thought Roger's blade would get more than 25 Rc and that Gib's 'hawk would not get almost file hard .I would have thought the blade would get maybe 35-40 and the hawk maybe 40-45 Rc.
 
Mete, I am confused to, that is why I made this post. With 5160 the tolerance is wide enough that on the low side it is not far from 1050 and I never have had trouble getting it hard enough. Any ideas out there. Gib
 
FWIW- I have a bunch of medium carbon steel banding (I don't have the specs on the steel, the Co. won't return email) that gets pretty hard in water (bends a bit before breaking), but after quenching in superquench it barely bends before breaking.
Mete- I have a graph I found on the net which plots Rockwell C hardness against carbon content, and according to the curve, steel with .4% is capable of a hardness of 61-62- but that doesn't seem realistic at all.
This was taken from a figure in a book titled, "Variation of the hardness of martensite as a function of carbon content as measured on the Rockwell-C scale. (After Burns, J. L., Moore, T. L., and Archer, R. S., Trans. ASM, 26, 1 [1938].)
 
Looking at hardenability data of 1045,a 2" round at midradius should get what Roger got . But a thin blade should get higher, in fact the max obtainable shouldbe 55-57 Rc. ???
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top