Need Help Troubleshooting Results

i4Marc

i4Marc

Joined
Oct 19, 2011
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I recently heat treated some coupons in preparation for hardening some forged blades. The steels tested were 1095 and W2. They are not hardening. I'm trying to chase down what is going wrong. I would be interested in your thoughts.

This is what I know:

My hardness tester is working fine. It is a Grizzly HR150A. I sampled the test block before testing the coupons. The reading was spot on.

I was suspicious of my quench oil (Parks 50) awhile back so I bought a new batch which is now maybe 8 months old. I haven't used it much and keep it covered when not in use.

The Oven used is an Evenheat KH418. I was having problems with holding temps a few months ago so after speaking with an engineer at Evenheat and getting his recommendation I replaced the thermocouple with an upgraded unit.

The 1095 I started with was a bit thicker than the W2 so I surfaced them all down to 1/4" thick before heat treating. When thermal cycling the coupons were heated to temp then allowed to air cool to black and cooled before heating to the next temp. The heat treated samples were then surface ground to remove decarb taking care not to overheat them. Hardness testing was done as quenched.

Coupons were cut from bar stock but were still normalized and thermal cycled before heat treating.

These are my results:
57SySNP.jpg
 
Where did you get the 1095?

My shopmate recently made some.knives with 1095 that didnt harden, ended up needing 3 normalizing cycles before it would harden properly
 
This is from a post and heat treating I did earlier today using .125" stock
-------------------------
I just treated two Aldo W2 blades:

1600f 20 min air cool, repeat at 1475f, 1450f, 1425f for 10 min each and air cool
harden at 1460f 13 min Parks 50 8 sec then water....getting 68Rc as quenched....after temper #1 - 64Rc, temper #2 - 64Rc nuts on.
 
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You also may have better "luck" with the actual forged blades hardening rather than the coupons, since the forging temps seem to negate the problems stock removal makers are having with Aldo's W2 not hardening.

~Paul
My Youtube Channel
... (Just some older videos of some knives I've made in the past)
 
I have some w2 that gave similar results....40 HRC. Cariboo knives did the HT for me and that was the results. Disappointing. I'm pretty sure he started at 1750 for the first cycle.
 
Welcome to the wonderful world of W2. I had similar issues a year ago and did a lot of coupon testing to find a protocol that worked. I have a similar set up to yours.
Some of the W2 that's out there needs a lot of heat to break up the spheroidized state that it's in. Forging will do it.
For non forged steel you may have to go to 1750 for normalization before thermal cycling. You might also try higher aus temps as well ie 1475.
 
i4Marc said:
I recently heat treated some coupons in preparation for hardening some forged blades. The steels tested were 1095 and W2. They are not hardening. I'm trying to chase down what is going wrong.
Click to expand...

What happened is I bet you bought your steel from NJSB. Thy REALLY need to let people know when buying there steel that it’s problematic. And that you can’t use the “industry standard” to heat treat it.
 
Robert Erickson said:
Welcome to the wonderful world of W2. I had similar issues a year ago and did a lot of coupon testing to find a protocol that worked. I have a similar set up to yours.
Some of the W2 that's out there needs a lot of heat to break up the spheroidized state that it's in. Forging will do it.
For non forged steel you may have to go to 1750 for normalization before thermal cycling. You might also try higher aus temps as well ie 1475.
Click to expand...
This is far from the wonderful world. I have some of dons W2 and that is a wonderful world. W2 should not be a crazy difficult steel to heat treat. Yes it can be tricky to eek out every last drop of performance but should not be a battle to get it to even harden.
 
JTknives said:
This is far from the wonderful world. I have some of dons W2 and that is a wonderful world. W2 should not be a crazy difficult steel to heat treat. Yes it can be tricky to eek out every last drop of performance but should not be a battle to get it to even harden.
Click to expand...
That's why I said some of the W2 that's out there.
I agree it shouldn't be crazy difficult. That's why I'm stocking up on 26C3 now.
My problem was that I already purchased a bunch of this NJSB W2 before all the posts about it not hardening. So my dilemma was either not use it at all or learn how to heat treat it.
 
Robert Erickson said:
My problem was that I already purchased a bunch of this NJSB W2 before all the posts about it not hardening. So my dilemma was either not use it at all or learn how to heat treat it.
Click to expand...

If you’ve already spent the money, you may as well use it...

other folks on here have had good success with it, so just copy what they are doing and see if it works for you.

If this is just a hobby for you, you really aren’t loosing anything until you spend more money messing with it than the steel cost it the first place...
 
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Thanks fellas. The steel is indeed from NJSB. I didn't mention it because I didn't want the post to be about bashing Aldo. I just need to get this stuff to harden reliably. I too have quite a lot of steel I have in stock and I can't afford to just write it off. I need to use it up, eventually. I'll take a look at 26C3 one of these days but I still need to get this problem worked out first. I have some DHIII round bar but I'm saving that for special projects.


OK, more questions:
If I use a much higher normalizing temp to break up the spheroidized state its in, like 1750˚, can the following cycles be back in the normal range....like 1400˚ and 1250˚ or do they need to be higher as well?

If I work out a HT that works on the coupons can I use that HT on my forged blades without any detrimental results?

Which other steels from NJSB have similar known issues?
 
[If I use a much higher normalizing temp to break up the spheroidized state its in, like 1750˚, can the following cycles be back in the normal range....like 1400˚ and 1250˚ or do they need to be higher as well?

I do 1750, 1550, 1450 then aus. I'm not sure you need 1250 unless you're annealing?

If I work out a HT that works on the coupons can I use that HT on my forged blades without any detrimental results?

Probably won't need the 1750 in this scenario.

[/QUOTE]
 
OK, thanks Rob.

What is happening with the 1095? I am getting inconsistent results and not achieving the optimal as-quenched hardness. Does the NJSB 1095 suffer from the same issues as his W2 or am I looking at a different problem?
 
I get that Hoss. But nobody is getting consistent results above 64HRC for 1095?
 
Mr Aldrich, I haven't used any of the most recent W2 because of the issues others brought to my attention, and you have the exact same issues. This is what I was told was required to get Aldo's current W2 to harden, if you're doing stock removal. (Guys who are forging this steel aren't having the problem, because their initial high heats are breaking up the VERY coarsely annealed structure.)

You have to normalize this W2 WAY hotter than industry standard of 1650°F. I was told it took 1900°F to get consistent hardness results. Soak at 1900°F for 10 minutes and let it air cool.

Next is cycling for grain refinement, but you MUST reach critical temp for the phase change to occur, thus "refine" grain. 1400°F is barely there. 1250°F is respheroidizing temps and should be avoided (unless that is your goal....to anneal it again...at which point I would say quench from your last cycle, then do 1200°F for 2 hours...but I don't think that's your goal.)
Cycle at ~1500°F or 1475°F 3x. You can use descending heats, as in 1500, 1475, 1450. Don't go above 1525F (bottom end of normalizing temps), don't go below 1425F (you need the phase change to occur).

After that, then do your austentizing temp tests, and see what you get.

Also agreed that 1/4" is thick for 1095 or W2. In a wedge shape, however (bevels roughly pre ground before heat treat), the edge should harden fine, and may give an auto hamon. But I realize you need a flat surface to hardness test.

I would probably use 1/8" coupons for hardness testing. Sorry no help with the 1095. Last time I used it was Aldo's 1/16" stuff, and after a regular normalize/cycle/austenitize/quench I was getting solid results. Years ago.
 
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