HT Gone Wrong . . .

[lelyea]

First knife, wood charcoal forge, 80CRV2 steel. I did a good job wet sanding to 800 prior to heat treating attempt. I heated a bolt to warm the oil before quenching. See the picture. Did I get the blade way too hot (melted it), for sure, or could this also happen from leaving it soak too long?

Thanks,

 

[Jrmysell]

Looks like scale/death to me. Just grind it off and you should reach hard steel underneath

 

[lanternnate]

Don’t worry about sanding all the way to 800 before heat treat. No matter what you’ll have some scale to deal with and have to sand more anyways. 120 is good nuff before heat treat. When I was using a wood charcoal forge, I found soaking really wasn’t an option. The heat really just isn’t controllable enough causing overheating and the oxygen mix isn’t always awesome given the use of a blower to get the heat up. Too much oxygen makes more scale to clean up after. I had much better luck with the charcoal using the get it hot then get it wet approach. Using 1080 or 1084 let’s you get away with that.

On this one I’d agree just looks like a fair bit of scale. Might have gotten a bit overheated, but looks better than my first. Grind it down clean so you can keep plugging along figuring out the rest. Then have fun starting the next one. Welcome to the addiction

 

[HSC ///]

When I was using a wood charcoal forge, I found soaking really wasn’t an option. The heat really just isn’t controllable enough causing overheating

curious if you ever tried this with a steel pipe muffle on top of the charcoal?
I was shown how to do this soaking 1095 and it can work...there is a right time to begin the soak time where the charcoal stabilizes in temperature....

 

[lelyea]

Thank everyone for their replies . . . The muffle looks very interesting and it looks like a temperature probe too! I'll read up on it this morning.
My picture is after hand standing for 5 minutes. The solid black you see actually has depth to it - maybe 1/64 of an inch.
I am thinkin' I should've started out with 1084, like everyone else does - I will order a chunk today.

 

[lanternnate]

curious if you ever tried this with a steel pipe muffle on top of the charcoal?
I was shown how to do this soaking 1095 and it can work...there is a right time to begin the soak time where the charcoal stabilizes in temperature....

Nope, I was doing so right in the coals. That little pipe rig up with the koa wool topping might have done the trick, but I pretty quickly moved on from charcoal to gas.

 

[Ken H>]

Hand sanding for scale? That's not very effective method. Scale is so hard you'll have to grind to remove.

 

[john april]

looks like the blade was too low in the red coals, near the bottom of the coals there is still a lot of oxygen, and it is easier to burn and decarb the metal.

 

[lelyea]

OK, OK . . . I agree with everyone - certainly with John. I am new and I did have the knife all of the way down in the 'V' of my wood charcoal forge. I have since ground off all of the scale and there is indeed a knife under there. I am going to try with a piece of pipe for a muffle as HSC suggested (newbies have to try everything at least once . . .)

I was VERY surprised at how very fast I went from cool to beyond red in this little wood charcoal forge with a piece of 2 inch pipe jammed into the end and a heat gun blowing air into the coals. I knew it was too hot so moved it a bit, let it cool some - then brought it back to non-magnetic and quenched it.

It's a learning process - just like everything else.

Thanks again,

Len