- Joined
- Sep 9, 2003
- Messages
- 2,361
Alden, allow me to explain this new thread as opposed to just answering the other thread. It is my policy, based upon my strongly held principles not to participate in threads that include my name in the title. Some may see this as a quirky idiosyncracy, but I have my reasons. As I see it this is the “Shop Talk - BladeSmith Questions and Answers” forum not the “Kevin Cashen Question and Answer Forum”, and I have no desire to see that change. I have always felt the strength of forums is the open participation and input from as many sources as possible, if a person wants a discussion exclusively with me e-mails work best for that. Individual posts within a thread are fine to address to one person but an entire thread addressed to one person robs the poster of input from all the other knowledgeable people on this forum. I believe everybody should have an equal opportunity at the microphone here.
In this matter I not only apologize to you and others who have called on me directly, and certainly to NDallyn for not getting back with him in his thread 4 days ago regarding 1095 brittleness, however so many people gave such excellent input that things worked exactly as I hope they will when I refrain from such exclusive threads and allow others to get involved.
All the same I guess this is where I reply to the other thread just to keep those waiting for thier pound of flesh from saying "Hah! You got no answer to that do ya Cashen!"
Oh jeeezzzz, where to begin…
Alden in your words I have expressed “disdain” for Wayne Goddard’s steel quenching methods. In which thread have I mentioned Wayne in particular? And when have I ever negatively discussed Wayne’s methods specifically? Bear with me here, the point is quite relevant.
I would be lying if I didn’t confess to having to overcome an immediate defensive reaction to your post in my tone in this reply. Allow me to explain why. One of the greatest obstacles and frustrations in trying to weed out informational grain from chaff in knifemaking has been, and continues to be, this obnoxious personalization that occurs with any attempt to discuss methods or materials. It is often either little more than a tactic of poisoning the well to make a dissenter immediately back down to avoid appearing to dislike a popular figure, or is a sick form of entertainment that I have seen many get from pitting well known smiths against each other. I take the latter quite personally as I have had it pulled on me more than once. I make no secret about my differences with Ed Fowlers theories, yet one time on this very site I personally apologized to Ed and refused to be used when people pitted us against each other in a personal way. In another instance another well known smith would contact me regularly after the same gutless weasel would send him a message detailing statements about him that I never made. This went on until both of us realized the game that was being played. I don’t like putting hot knives into lard but for the life of me I cannot fathom how that indicates in any way how I feel about another human being. I really don’t need anybody creating antagonism that just isn’t there between Wayne and me. I hope you understand.
Certainly there are subjective reasons as well as the objective ones for my choices in quenchants, but I would be very curious to know what your observations are as to my subjective reasons, it may be interesting to compare.
If you have had these purely objective curiosities then can I assume you have asked any proponent of goop, glop, lard, Wesson oil etc… for their results of the objective tests proving their claims of effectiveness? You see aside from the philosophical problems with proving a negative, most of society doesn’t stop what they are doing to disprove every claim to come out of left field, and in any steel business outside a few bladesmiths lard quenches are out of left field. The logical and reasonable approach has always laid the burden of proof on the claimant of the extraordinary position. As Stacy Apelt once stated so well, it would be like a lab spending millions to research if water boils at 212F.
That being said, yes I have made my decisions for quenchants based upon years of looking at the results on the microscopic level and my findings can be summed up in two words- fine pearlite. And what I found was that the more viscous the quenchant, the more fine pearlite or other unwnated products were present, and in an odd coincidence this is exactly what every industry that quenches steel has also found over the years. But then on the other hand there are all those instances where industry has used highly viscous or gooey compounds to effectively quench… oh wait… umm ….ohhh….
"I also know that just the conversion of a material from solid to liquid requires additional heat with no rise in temperature” yes that is called an endothermic process or reaction and is the basis for the decalescence that we discuss so much in heating steel. Along with my observations, I have some pretty good hunches (much like the ones that tell me if I jump off my roof I will fall) about how it will work in quenching. But who knows you may be onto to something here. Perhaps you could do some testing on that and let us know what your results are. Perhaps you could make a huge unforeseen breakthrough in quenching technology. Perhaps we have been overlooking ice as a quenchant, one never knows all the curveballs the universe could throw at us. Unfortunately I have too many knives to make to explore them all.
I have never participated in a “quench-off” nor would I care to. I also have never agreed to meet somebody behind the school at 3:00 to avoid being called “a chicken” when they didn’t like my steel choice.
I am sorry to sound short, (and the proper way to read this entire post is not loaded with anger and emotion but in a tired, weary monotone) however I did say in my most recent rant involving this topic
”…if you want to argue with me on that one- don’t bother! If you don’t get it you will just have to live with it or work it out on your own! So in that sense I am even cool with you using goo, as long as I don’t have to hear about how it "works just fine".”
I am still cool with folks using whatever they want, and I still don’t care to debate the subject. A lot of people use a lot of different things for quenching, I have found quenchants made specifically for that task that have volumes of testing and research data showing exactly how and why they work, which my own observations totally confirm. When I compare this with “it works just fine”, “it skates a file no problem” or “it cuts lots of rope”, I get a real good idea as to where conjecture is providing the answers.
P.S. Folks I kind of see where the other thread started to go and if this one turns into another tired old Park #50 versus Wesson oil thread, I simply won’t participate, I can’t believe others aren’t as tired as I am of pounding on that long dead horse. Jeez guys, all I want is to provide sound, fact based information to help other makers make informed decisions, why does it have to be a @#$damned personal cage match just to do that?
In this matter I not only apologize to you and others who have called on me directly, and certainly to NDallyn for not getting back with him in his thread 4 days ago regarding 1095 brittleness, however so many people gave such excellent input that things worked exactly as I hope they will when I refrain from such exclusive threads and allow others to get involved.
All the same I guess this is where I reply to the other thread just to keep those waiting for thier pound of flesh from saying "Hah! You got no answer to that do ya Cashen!"
Oh jeeezzzz, where to begin…
Alden in your words I have expressed “disdain” for Wayne Goddard’s steel quenching methods. In which thread have I mentioned Wayne in particular? And when have I ever negatively discussed Wayne’s methods specifically? Bear with me here, the point is quite relevant.
I would be lying if I didn’t confess to having to overcome an immediate defensive reaction to your post in my tone in this reply. Allow me to explain why. One of the greatest obstacles and frustrations in trying to weed out informational grain from chaff in knifemaking has been, and continues to be, this obnoxious personalization that occurs with any attempt to discuss methods or materials. It is often either little more than a tactic of poisoning the well to make a dissenter immediately back down to avoid appearing to dislike a popular figure, or is a sick form of entertainment that I have seen many get from pitting well known smiths against each other. I take the latter quite personally as I have had it pulled on me more than once. I make no secret about my differences with Ed Fowlers theories, yet one time on this very site I personally apologized to Ed and refused to be used when people pitted us against each other in a personal way. In another instance another well known smith would contact me regularly after the same gutless weasel would send him a message detailing statements about him that I never made. This went on until both of us realized the game that was being played. I don’t like putting hot knives into lard but for the life of me I cannot fathom how that indicates in any way how I feel about another human being. I really don’t need anybody creating antagonism that just isn’t there between Wayne and me. I hope you understand.
Certainly there are subjective reasons as well as the objective ones for my choices in quenchants, but I would be very curious to know what your observations are as to my subjective reasons, it may be interesting to compare.
If you have had these purely objective curiosities then can I assume you have asked any proponent of goop, glop, lard, Wesson oil etc… for their results of the objective tests proving their claims of effectiveness? You see aside from the philosophical problems with proving a negative, most of society doesn’t stop what they are doing to disprove every claim to come out of left field, and in any steel business outside a few bladesmiths lard quenches are out of left field. The logical and reasonable approach has always laid the burden of proof on the claimant of the extraordinary position. As Stacy Apelt once stated so well, it would be like a lab spending millions to research if water boils at 212F.
That being said, yes I have made my decisions for quenchants based upon years of looking at the results on the microscopic level and my findings can be summed up in two words- fine pearlite. And what I found was that the more viscous the quenchant, the more fine pearlite or other unwnated products were present, and in an odd coincidence this is exactly what every industry that quenches steel has also found over the years. But then on the other hand there are all those instances where industry has used highly viscous or gooey compounds to effectively quench… oh wait… umm ….ohhh….
"I also know that just the conversion of a material from solid to liquid requires additional heat with no rise in temperature” yes that is called an endothermic process or reaction and is the basis for the decalescence that we discuss so much in heating steel. Along with my observations, I have some pretty good hunches (much like the ones that tell me if I jump off my roof I will fall) about how it will work in quenching. But who knows you may be onto to something here. Perhaps you could do some testing on that and let us know what your results are. Perhaps you could make a huge unforeseen breakthrough in quenching technology. Perhaps we have been overlooking ice as a quenchant, one never knows all the curveballs the universe could throw at us. Unfortunately I have too many knives to make to explore them all.
I have never participated in a “quench-off” nor would I care to. I also have never agreed to meet somebody behind the school at 3:00 to avoid being called “a chicken” when they didn’t like my steel choice.
I am sorry to sound short, (and the proper way to read this entire post is not loaded with anger and emotion but in a tired, weary monotone) however I did say in my most recent rant involving this topic
”…if you want to argue with me on that one- don’t bother! If you don’t get it you will just have to live with it or work it out on your own! So in that sense I am even cool with you using goo, as long as I don’t have to hear about how it "works just fine".”
I am still cool with folks using whatever they want, and I still don’t care to debate the subject. A lot of people use a lot of different things for quenching, I have found quenchants made specifically for that task that have volumes of testing and research data showing exactly how and why they work, which my own observations totally confirm. When I compare this with “it works just fine”, “it skates a file no problem” or “it cuts lots of rope”, I get a real good idea as to where conjecture is providing the answers.
P.S. Folks I kind of see where the other thread started to go and if this one turns into another tired old Park #50 versus Wesson oil thread, I simply won’t participate, I can’t believe others aren’t as tired as I am of pounding on that long dead horse. Jeez guys, all I want is to provide sound, fact based information to help other makers make informed decisions, why does it have to be a @#$damned personal cage match just to do that?
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. I know that you feel like a lightning rod but then again you stand the tallest.