Hitachi White/Blue info

[samuraistuart]

The data sheet states 1364-1418° for white and 1380-1436° for blue, in contradiction to the info you found. Also interesting is how cool this metal should be forged and welded.

I've updated my baseline HT chart to include these steels. To reiterate, the chart is baseline only to give a starting point. Do NOT consider it a replacement for a known HT recipe.

View attachment 561732

Those are the annealing temps....not the hardening temps. White steel.......1450°F or 1460°F with 5-10 minute soak. Blue steel.....1475°F or 1490°F with 10 or 15 minute soak. The steels from Dictum come fine spheroidized (not to be confused with coarse heavy spheroidized)....and are ready to harden as received. You will find little to no difference in thermal cycling these samples vs straight into hardening.

Blue steel, as from Aldo, is extremely shallow hardening as well. Don't let the Cr content fool you. Treat it like White steel as far as hardenability.

 

[jdm61]

IIRC, the first time that I bought Parks #50 the spec sheet said that the temp range was like 90-120F, but I think it was Don who told me not to bother to heat it except in what passes for winter in Florida. The next time that I saw the spec sheet , they had changed it to 70-120F. That means that I might have to warm it slightly like 3 weeks out of the year.

Thanks Guys,:thumbup: I was not aware that Parks 50 was a room temp quenchant. I have very limited experience with this and was just repeating what I read. I have a small piece of Blue # 2 and very interested to try it and see what the results are.

 

[BluntCut MetalWorks]

I ran out of laminated white#2 & blue#2 steels (bought from Dictum). I've Aldo Blue#2 and visual confirmed *as received* is fine spheroidize annealed however carbides in the grain boundary are fairly coarse (2 - 10x dia). And grain size is not that fine. So, I suspect Hitachi did fine spheroidize annealed w/o thermal cycle. Note - sample of 1, thus fwiw.

... The steels from Dictum come fine spheroidized (not to be confused with coarse heavy spheroidized)....and are ready to harden as received. You will find little to no difference in thermal cycling these samples vs straight into hardening...

 

[Dopic1]

You need to be kind of careful about "warming" Parks #50. The top end of its temp range is 120F and as best as i can tell, it doesn't appear have that mid range "sweet spot" like the Houghton/Toughquench stuff does at 150F. . It is a "room temperature" quenchant.

IIRC, the first time that I bought Parks #50 the spec sheet said that the temp range was like 90-120F, but I think it was Don who told me not to bother to heat it except in what passes for winter in Florida. The next time that I saw the spec sheet , they had changed it to 70-120F. That means that I might have to warm it slightly like 3 weeks out of the year.

Our winters here are just a tad cooler, I was doing some O1 blades last winter and the air temp was 4 F on a sunny day. Overnight it was -12 so the oil was just a little thick.

 

[jdm61]

Yeah, you might want to put that pot on the stove for a few minutes. When I got my first 5 gallon bucket of #50, i bought a Home Depot big turkey fryer to use as a quench tank. i never fired it up once with #50 and when I finally bought some McMaster-Carr medium speed oil that needs to be heated, I just put it in the fryer and started using the 5 gallon steel bucket that my first batch of #50 came in as my "high speed' quench tank. If i need to heat it, a bar of hot bar stock out of the forge will do the trick.

Our winters here are just a tad cooler, I was doing some O1 blades last winter and the air temp was 4 F on a sunny day. Overnight it was -12 so the oil was just a little thick.