I want to like 52100... but..

69_knives

69_knives

Joined
Nov 20, 2008
Messages
1,855
For those that have forged both 1095 and 52100 and made a decision between the two which was it and why?

The first time I forged 52100 was this weekend and I know I had my share of problems with 1095 when I first started with it and 52100 is a whole different ball game.

I've come to like 1095 and have managed to get some pretty good performance out of the HT for the 1095 blades so I guess what I want to know is; is there something significant that 52100 can offer in the way of performance over and above 1095 with an equal amount of time spent on HT and forging?

Thanks.

Steve
 
52100 should hold an edge slightly longer than 1095, key word here is should. I didn't like 52100 when I first used it, so I stopped using it...
 
52100 is a nice steel... if you can get it in small cross sections or if you have a power hammer >_< I have two 12 inch long bars 3/4" round and even at that size it just doesnt want to move under a hand hammer. I like my 1095 and 1084, they move well and perform just about as well as 52100, within a margin that the only way i'd tell the difference on a finished knife is if someone told me what it was made of.
 
Justin.Mercier said:
52100 is a nice steel... if you can get it in small cross sections or if you have a power hammer >_< I have two 12 inch long bars 3/4" round and even at that size it just doesnt want to move under a hand hammer. I like my 1095 and 1084, they move well and perform just about as well as 52100, within a margin that the only way i'd tell the difference on a finished knife is if someone told me what it was made of.
Click to expand...

Justin, Ed Fowler might have a slightly different take on this.:)
 
I picked up a bunch of 36" x 3/4" rounds, well not a bunch but about 30#.

Basically I was fretting because I thought I did something stupid in that I forged out a nice 12" chef knife and then before tempering I tried to flex it and you know what happened... I got to see the grain.

All in all, I see that now as a good thing, the grain was a bit big. So, I hammered out a couple smaller blades to purposely break and see the grain had improved. I started doing a bunch of interrupted quenches after I was finished hammering, like every 2 - 3 heats.

I think I'm going to make a jig for hammering the plunges into the bar for integrals, that should make the whole experience much more pleasureable.
 
Between the two, 52100 is my choice. It is more difficult to forge, and it can certainly be much more finicky than 1095 in nearly all areas. 52100 is one of those steels you need to "learn", and it requires time and effort to understand how to extract the most usability from.

I simply will not use, or keep 1095 in my shop any more, due to its inconsistency. Some batches work one way, some another, and some will not fully harden. Too many variables there for me.

Although the learning curve on 52100 can be rather long, once you learn it, and understand it, it is always consistent.
 
An idea I got from Kevin Cashen's "... 3 steel types" sticky might make 1095 a more consistent steel if it was taken down from thicker stock or round/square stock. Barring that, W1 has a tool steel spec. and would have both higher quality and consistency. It's readily available in ground & polished rounds (drill rod) and may be available from Cincinnatti Tool Steel in de-carb free flats and squares... http://www.cintool.com

I don't use 52100. I use O1 or L6 or O1/L6 instead. The theory being, why use a steel designed to roll for a tool designed to cut?

Sorry, couldn't help myself... =]

Mike
 
Last edited:
Mike Krall said:
An idea I got from Kevin Cashen's "... 3 steel types" sticky might make 1095 a more consistent steel if it was taken down from thicker stock or round/square stock. Barring that, W1 has a tool steel spec. and would have both higher quality and consistently. It's readily available in ground & polished rounds (drill rod) and may be available from Cincinatti Tool Steel in de-carb free flats and squares... http://www.cintool.com

I don't use 52100. I use O1 or L6 or O1/L6 instead. The theory being, why use a steel designed to roll for a tool designed to cut?

Sorry, couldn't help myself... =]

Mike
Click to expand...

I respectfully disagree with this statement. 52100 is NOT designed to roll. It's designed to be tough so that it can carry load and hard enough to resist wear, so that it has long life in a bearing application. What more can you ask from a knife steel than to be tough and to resist wear?
 
I've been reading Ed Fowlers HT method for 52100 and have to wonder. He mentions a lot of what he does is for grain refinement from forging at very low temps, even cold to the intermediate quenches to multiple normalizings and multiple quenches with no soak.

I guess this is something I will have to find out for myself but from the little bit that I've learned, if you are somewhat bad to your grain, you can fix it with the normalizing process. To prevent grain growth in my 1095 I do 3 normalize cycles, one each at 1600, 1550, and 1500, then soak at 1475 for 15 minutes and quench.

It is my understanding that decreasing the temp on the normalizing cycles refines the grain and leaving the last cycle at a higher temperature than your austenitizing temperature prevents grain growth when soaking.

Would a similar treatment work for 52100 maybe changing the temps by adding 25 degrees all around.
 
69, you're on the right track but will need to experiment. 52100 treated like a simple carbon steel will yield poor results. It's a weird bird.
 
Ed Caffrey recommended that I work with 5160 for a while, and getting a feel for it, before working with 52100.
- Thanks, Ed.
 
One thing that I did notice on the blades that I purposely broke, the ones I did a bunch of interrupted quenches on after hammering is that when I broke them, the grain in the thicker cross sections was significantly finer than at the edge. The outstanding variable would be the thinner cross section would cool too much during forging to benefit from the quench.

So to me it looks like the steel does benefit from the multiple quenches, as long as the edge is hot enough to benefit from it.
 
69_knives said:
One thing that I did notice on the blades that I purposely broke, the ones I did a bunch of interrupted quenches on after hammering is that when I broke them, the grain in the thicker cross sections was significantly finer than at the edge. The outstanding variable would be the thinner cross section would cool too much during forging to benefit from the quench.

So to me it looks like the steel does benefit from the multiple quenches, as long as the edge is hot enough to benefit from it.
Click to expand...

Or, it could be that you got grain growth near the edge due to overheating the edge. (I also believe in sub-critical, interrupted {15-20 secs.} quenching during forging.)
 
Starting your forging at high temperature and lowering the temperature as you get closer to the final size would be more appropriate than forging from a low temperature the entire time, in my opinion.

I don't recommend quenches during forging. I think this is done based on a misunderstanding of how grains work and how they grow. I think you should probably pick between multiple normalizing cycles or multiple quenches. Doing everything multiple times won't necessarily help. This will also help you focus on getting one of them right instead of just doing everything a bunch of times and assuming it will be better.

A subcritical anneal is good for fine grain size and for fine carbide size, if done at the right temps and times. Some have the idea that you should go as low as you can on the annealing temperature as long as you can still grind and finish it. That's not the best way to do it, in my opinion.
 
Personally I dont care about how difficult it is to work with because ultimately your then compromising your end product. Thats not what Im into. My advice is figure out what material properties you want and select the best available material that best matches those desired properties.
 
I gotta share an experience I had about a year ago with 52100. I was experimenting with the number of thermal cycles, and wanted to see what multiples would do to it. I started with 3, then 4, and all the way up to 7, After hardening each, I sent samples off for spectrographing.......those thermal cycled 5-7 times exhibited less and less hardness, until the one done 7X barely hardened at all. The spectrograph results showed that the grain size at 7X thermal cycles was so small that the steel simply would not fully harden. So, from the results of that experiment, it proved that you can make the grain size too small in 52100. As Don said, it has some peculiarities that need to be understood and in some cases considered when working it.

I still stand by my feeling for this steel. Every cutting competition that I've won, has been won with 52100 or its Japanese "twin brother" SUJ-2.
 
scottickes said:
I respectfully disagree with this statement. 52100 is NOT designed to roll. It's designed to be tough so that it can carry load and hard enough to resist wear, so that it has long life in a bearing application. What more can you ask from a knife steel than to be tough and to resist wear?
Click to expand...

Hold a hard edge to maintain the geometry that does the cutting without chipping. There is a reason industrial cutting tool edges (the ones that have to be able to cut thousands of cycles of tough materials while driven by force-multiplying machinery) are made of steels like 1095, O-1, A2 and D2. 52100 is a specialized hypereutechtoid steel meant for bearings. Bearings generally take substantially different loading than blades.

There are people who swear by 52100, there are also people who swear by quenching in lard. Their knives sell for more than mine, but I doubt that it is any physical property of the steel that is generating that price.

I will choose steel that is meant for making cutting tools rather than steel that is meant to make strong blunt expanses of polished metal and be able to maintain its original shape at elevated temperatures.

-Page
 
In industrial settings its not always the 'best' its the most economical solutions. 5160 was never suppose to be used for cutting, yet it does well, 52100 has allot more potential if handled correctly, also the results speak for it. I would say if you have a reliable supply Steve, than keep on experimenting.
 
scottickes said:
I respectfully disagree with this statement. 52100 is NOT designed to roll. It's designed to be tough so that it can carry load and hard enough to resist wear, so that it has long life in a bearing application. What more can you ask from a knife steel than to be tough and to resist wear?
Click to expand...

Scott,

This is the second time I said what I said and this is the second time you said what you said. I'm serious about my belief, but I'm joking.

Here is a thing I've wondered. There must be a fairly standard HT process in 52100 bearing manufacture... end to end... from starting the balling process to end product. Would there be differences, or not, in HT for bearings and blades? Would you say what you feel the differences, or not, are.

What would you're response be to that question "mete"?

Mike
 
Ceramic knives exhibit excellent hardness but are awful in terms of toughness and elastic stress strain performance.

This discussion is all too general :) "52100 is not designed to roll" :confused: All steels will deform elastically and plastically..........

Ed Caffrey rather than anecdotes, do you have any specific data of how HRC changes as the grain size grew smaller?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top