Naturally Aged Steel ?

Thomas Linton

Thomas Linton

Joined
Jun 16, 2003
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We all know about "natually aged" cheese. Some like their "naturally aged" wine. (No, no, not the beer. Anything but old beer!)

Cabela's is selling knives with naturally aged steel: "Blades are cut from the SAME MATERIAL AS old sawmill blades, then ground on a water-cooled wheel TO PRESERVE THE NATURAL TEMPERS GAINED AS THE BLADE AGE." [caps added].

So I was a' wonderin', Uncle Biil, are you setting aside some nice blades so the temper can improve as the blades naturally age?
Is the management of B-G searching tirelessly (or tiredly) for some really old Mercedes or Volvo springs to take advantage of the natural tempers gained (under the blue-green mold, no doubt) as they rusted in peace in some gulch?

(OK, OK -- maybe "old" is not a word to use here. I've been warned! But, I ask you, one and all, is "aged" any better?)
 
Don't know about all that, but I do know "natural aging" has done little to improve my temper (or my looks for that matter).

Sarge
 
(OK, OK -- maybe "old" is not a word to use here. I've been warned!...)
Click to expand...

LOL..."experienced"?

Yes...BG is using "experienced" metal...at least as far as I know, they aren't going out and truck jacking to steal the springs off new trucks!

:) :p :D
 
Cabela's sells lots of good stuff at good prices, but their catalog copywriters have always suffered from a certain, er, disconnect from reality. One of my favorites over the years has been the cap and ball revolvers with pictures reversed, so that they appear to load from the left side. Probabably made from aged steel.
 
Well according to a fellow who wrote an article on the 50 year Catteragus Q225 there is something to the "aged steel."
His view is that as steel ages over enough time it becomes the same as if it was cyro quenched and all the material that can become martensite does.
Can't ever remember the material that becomes martensite.:rolleyes:
The article is in one of the yearly KNIVES 199* books and is what prompted me to seek out and buy an old Catteragus Q225. They do hold an incredible edge!!!!:D
The fellow that wrote the article assumed the steel in these knives was some sort of alloy. They had a pretty much destroyed knife tested and found that the steel is simply 1095.:D
 
There have been extensive testing of steels like that.

WHat it is, is with these high carbon too lsteels, not all the austentite is converted to martensite during the heat treat(which is what you want). nowadays, we can do that from start with a good cryo step as part of the heat treat. But with older knives, they did this naturally, over time, as the austentite slowly converted to martensite. That's why you may have heard of an older guy who's had same knife around for decades say that it holds an edge better now than whyen he bought it
 
Not to worry, I'm picking up what both of y'all are layin' down. Ever since I first read Yvsa's description of the austentite/martensite conversion that occurs as steel ages, I've scrounged flea markets, thrift shops, and antique stores looking for the oldest files I can find to grind knife blades from. Hard to describe the difference, kind of like the difference between wood that's just been dried, and wood that's been seasoned. Side note, Nicholson files have been around since the early 1800's. Mr. Nicholson himself developed the process for mass producing files, making him sort of the Henry Ford of files.

Sarge
 
Ah yes, the mystery of the Q225 Commando/QM/Paratrooper knife. I read that article. Have the annual somewhere. No one can find official records and Cattaragus had a fire.

So they may have stumbled on something? (But note, this is steel "from the same metal as old sawmill blades.") So Uncle should be "laying down" some 2004 vintage to enjoy in 2014?
 
I passed along some of this thread to a very knowledgeable friend who is a collector, student and dealer of antique edged weapons. His reply:
This idea of "aged" steel crops up here and there. Old time Japanese tool smiths believe it, they bang and grind out their chisels and plane-irons and whatever, and put away the "best" ones for a few years for the temper to mellow out and improve. Some Turkish and Armenian cymbal makers believe the same thing; the Zildjian people regard it as a truism handed down from the founder of their enterprise.
I've never encountered anything from the metallurgist camp which would support this, however. Til then I'll regard it as something between folk belief and old wive's tale. I have a hard time believing that ferrous alloys behave the same way as do cheeses, whiskies, and wines. (By the way, French chefs have a reverential awe for the pre-WW II Sabatier carbon steel knives, but not because of their age--it's because they were hand forged in such a way that the edge portion became "packed" tighter and denser under the concentrated blows of the hammer that they tempered harder and springier.

One thing that does affect the internal structure of steel is repeated pressure, such as rolling and pounding. It's a sort of "pre-stressing", it's supposed to affect molecular alignment, etc. Smiths seemed to understand this empirically in centuries past, and even now. For this reason, some of the top Spanish gun barrel makers of the 17th-18th cent. prefered the tough fibrous iron of horseshoe nails made in the Vizcaya region for making their (almost unburstable) tubes, and the purists insisted on using just the heads of USED nails. This may also be the rationale of using rail steel by sword and knife factories in Manchuria, pre WWII, and in India. However, it would seem to me that the moment the metal was heated to forging temperature, the molecules which had become aligned and compressed by the work-induced pressure would jiggle around and become discombobulated all over again, and would then settle down into a new set of arrangements as the finished object were shaped under repeated heating and hammering.
 
I think it was elsewhere that I read this,
sorry if I'm repeating.

Reported somewhere that one particular sword-smith
in either China or Japan would bury each blade
for maybe a year or so after it was forged.
Only after that was the sword inspected & finished.

This was not for artificial antique faking,
but for some benefit to the sword steel.

Anyone else hear of this?


BTW---My backyard is available if anyone wants
to give this a try.
 
Burying a carbon steel blade in a tropical climate for a year? :eek: Perhaps as a sacrifice to the gods of the earth.
 
One would think that our khukuries already have a couple of hundred thousand miles on em'.
 
Cool.
I'm looking for more info,
but from:
http://www.alloytech.com/mmsonline/glossary/adoc.htm
"Age Hardening
Hardening by aging, usually after rapid cooling or cold working. The term as applied to soft, or low carbon steels, relates to a wide variety of commercially important, slow, gradual changes that take place in properties of steels after the final treatment. These changes, which bring about a condition of increased hardness, elastic limit, and tensile strength with a consequent loss in ductility, occur during the period in which the steel is at normal temperatures.
Aging
A change in properties that occurs at ambient or moderately elevated temperatures after hot working or a heat treating operation (quench aging in ferrous alloys), or after a cold working operation (strain aging). The change in properties is often, but not always, due to a phase change (precipitation), but does not involve a change in chemical composition. In a metal or alloy, a change in properties that generally occurs slowly at room temperature and more rapidly at higher temperatures."

Similar quote from:
http://www.metal-mart.com/Dictionary/dictleta.htm#I6


Sounds like exactly what Yvsa & etp777 describe.


======================================

Steel reference articles of interest:

Strengthening mechanisms in alloy steel
http://www.key-to-steel.com/Articles/Art11.htm

Quench Hardening, Good info on phase conversions during:
http://www.key-to-steel.com/Articles/Art12.htm

Lots of articles RE steel:
http://www.key-to-steel.com/Articles.htm
 
The old Offenhauser 4 cylinder racing engines (are they still made??) were made from iron block castings that sat outside for several years to "season." I was told. It seems that fresh castings change dimensionally, and if machined too soon, loose critical tolerances. Is this a related issue, or are they just working out internal stresses?
I once met a guy who had an axe that he told me had been in his family for 5 or 6 generations. "It's had 4 new handles and 2 new heads, of course."
 
Sure Bri, In the Iron foundry I worked at as a kid, it used to be reckond castings should not be machined untill they had weathered for a minimmum of 6 months, prefarably as long as commercialy possible with the more extreme the frosts & hot summers the better.{They went bancrupt in the end as they couldnt compete with Poland, India & Taiwan}

I know of no difinative proof with forged steel but personaly if given the choice I will choose an 100year old carbon steel cut throat razor over a "new" one any day!

Spiral
:D
 
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