MUST the Heat Affected Zone be eliminated??

C

Cushing H.

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Jun 3, 2019
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I just received some 26C3, and had to buy one piece that was just exactly the width I need. As I suspected when I placed the order, one edge of the piece was cut with plasma/laser, and clearly has a heat affected zone along it. Now .... I am going to use it to make a Nakiri - and so one side (the spine) will be straight and so get no profiling cutting, or anything. I am thinking that I can use that edge with the HAZ being the spine, profile the rest of the pattern, then send off for heat treating, where that HAZ area will be heated/hardened/annealed - and so I wont have any problem (except for some variation in grain structure, which probably does not matter much for the spine).

Am I right in my thinking - or should I make the blade slightly narrower and grind off that HAZ on the stock????
 
DeadboxHero said:
Grind it off
Click to expand...

What if you plan to do a differential HT or edge quench? I recently got some 1084 with some HAZ and I was hoping that keeping it on the spine for an edge quench would be fine, but if you say I should grind it off, then off it shall be ground
 
There are a variety of answers.
The HAZ is hard and can cause trouble in grinding, so most folks grind it away.
If you anneal/normalize the bar, the HAZ will be gone.
If you are grinding the profile and then doing the bevels post-HT, just ignore the HAZ and profile as normal. then cycle and HT.
 
Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith said:
There are a variety of answers.
The HAZ is hard and can cause trouble in grinding, so most folks grind it away.
If you anneal/normalize the bar, the HAZ will be gone.
If you are grinding the profile and then doing the bevels post-HT, just ignore the HAZ and profile as normal. then cycle and HT.
Click to expand...
Thanks Stacy. that is kind of what I was thinking. Most of the edge with the HAZ will stay just as it is - a flat straight spine. No grinding (other than to remove decarb).
 
I’ve been finishing some blades that were laser cut sample profiles and only ground the HAZ off the edge before hardening, I made one pass on the edge then pre ground the blades then heat treated. The rest of the profile gets cleaned up post heat treat during the handle shaping process, in my opinion there is no reason to process the same areas multiple times.
 
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