Is Aldo's 15N20 annealed and fine spheroidized?

[milkbaby]

Google failed to answer my subject question, whether New Jersey Steel Baron Aldo's 15N20 is annealed and fine spheroidized? I know a while back there was a forum thread where he said thinner than 0.130" was like Rc 42 because it was for bandsaw blades but that newer stock incoming would be fully annealed.

I am doing kitchen knives stock removal on 1x30 and backyard HT with two brick forge and canola oil. Since Aldo's 1084 in 0.125" is out of stock, 15N20 in 0.095" seemed like the next closest thing that I could do okay with my minimal equipment. If I could simply hacksaw, drill, grind, heat treat, temper, final grind and sharpen without any prior annealing or normalization before HT, that would be ideal.

I would call, but it's after hours and I'm impatient, LOL. If nobody knows, I'll call tomorrow and post the info I get over the phone.

ALSO: any other suggestions for steel that will be similarly simple for me to use? Needs to be about 0.125" to 0.095" thickness. Thank you!

 

[JTknives]

The .090 thick 15n20 I sell is 42-43rc and it is not hard to work with in this state. Heat treating my steel from this state produces a very nice fine grain. I'm not sure on how his heat treats in his state of hardness but mine just gets the austenite temp and parks 50 quench.

 

[samuraistuart]

I would call Aldo and ask him personally. There was a time (maybe still currently) when he did have certain thicknesses of 15n20 that were 42HRC, but the other thicknesses were spheroidized. I was thinking the .070" was semi hard, the other stuff was soft...but call him to verify.

 

[Willie71]

The 0.130 and 0.050" were soft. The 0.090 and 0.070 were the bandsaw steel. I don't know if he is still using the same supply now.

 

[milkbaby]

Thanks everybody! I called and found out the 0.065, 0.095, and 0.130 are "soft as buttah". There's going to be more 1084 in the future, he says they keep increasing their orders and it keeps selling out! I just don't want to wait to make more knives, the addiction is strong and I need my fix!

The .090 thick 15n20 I sell is 42-43rc and it is not hard to work with in this state. Heat treating my steel from this state produces a very nice fine grain. I'm not sure on how his heat treats in his state of hardness but mine just gets the austenite temp and parks 50 quench.

Thanks JT, I actually thought of your supply once I started seriously looking into 15N20. I would've tried it except that I'm seriously deficient in good tools, just using a hacksaw, files, and Grizzly 1x30. It takes a long time just to saw out a rough shape out of annealed 1084, so I wanted to stick to annealed stock.