No alternative to parks 50?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Go try telling any knifemaker that they are wrong for choosing their own "desired results", or they are wrong because they like what they like and try to make the kinds of knives they like,… AND they should be more like "you". I've tried it. It doesn't work.

You’ll be wasting your time, losing sleep and most of your friends... All the science and metallurgy in the world won’t help.

The only reason I make knives at all is so that I can make them how "I" want, and so should everyone else.

If you don't like canola, just don't use it! .... but just stop whining about it all the time! Same with Parks #50.

Let's all just take our rubber duckies and float them in our fluids a while, O.K.? :D
 
Tai Goo said:
Faster is not necessarily better. "Faster is better" is a myth. :)

The #50 craze is just a passing trend. Hype, IMO.
Click to expand...

I don't understand the hype comment -- it's simple physics. You want to get past the pearlite nose as slow as possible. For 1095, that's a half second. If you use a quenchant that's slower than that, you lose martensite/hardness.

Like Ed says: if you don't trust the Heatbath datasheet for their 7 second, or 11 second oils, prove it yourself: quench in water, test the hardness. That's nearly 100% martensite conversion, and the benchmark Rockwell hardness you want. Then quench in Parks 50, canola, peanut oil, ATF, mineral oil... test the hardness...
 
Rockwell hardness isn't everything... nothing is everything.

...Am I the only one getting tired of this?

Just take your own advice and see if you learn anything.
 
If it's entertaining, let's keep going! :)

Maybe we just need a few new facts. Anyone got any?
 
I'm enjoying it too

I am really curious though to try the various quenchants for myself to see how fast different ones are and what results they can give MY knives. I haven't seen many real speed numbers for canola, peanut, and even just plain old mineral oil.

I see a lot of arguing back and forth without any actual data from either side. Both groups appear to agree that parks 50 is fast enough for 1095 and that you need to use a quenchant that is fast enough to fully harden your blades.
As for the other "common alternatives" I see Tai saying that canola works fine and the other side saying that we need to use an oil specifically made for heat treating if we want the best results. The problem with that argument is that there aren't any oils made specifically for getting the best possible results on knives in a small shop. There are plenty of oils designed for getting optimal results on an assembly line but we aren't industrial users. We don't have the same requirements or the same concerns. I believe that our requirements and industrial requirements are close enough for industrial quenchants to likely work the best, but there are a lot of reasons industry would choose not to use a quenchant that wouldn't really apply to a knifemaker. Canola oil for instance would be a poor choice for industrial use even if it actually worked better than mineral oil or parafin based oils due to factors such as shelf life, limited number of heat cycles before the properties change, drag out, flash point, and cost. None of those factors really matter to a knifemaker buying a few gallons from WalMart.



If virgin blood was proven to be the absolute best quenchant for a given steel do you think industry would use it? Probably not, but I would sure as hell try to find a few virgins willing to sell a pint :D


So, the fact that industry doesn't use something really has no bearing on how well it will work for knives.
 
Fact: Chuck Norris forges blades with his fists and quenches them in the bodies of his enemies.

Have you ever heard of a Chuck Norris knife breaking?
 
Tai Goo said:
Rockwell hardness isn't everything... nothing is everything.
Click to expand...

Exactly, the Rockwell test only tests the tiny little area that is tested. It will not tell you how hard the center of your blade is or if you have patchy spots of hardness unless you are testing a $hit load of spots. You are testing one area or a few and assuming the rest of the part is the same. All it really does is give you a little bit more info than you had before. The best way to test a knife is to test it to its limits and if you do that, you will no longer have a useful knife. So the best you can really do to produce a good knife (IMHO) is to get VERY consistent with your process and "test" a blade here and there to see if you are being consistent and getting consistent results hoping that the ones you do not test to destruction are as tough as the ones you do. The key is consistency, either with canola or parks or whatever. If you are getting consistent good results who gives a rats a$$.
 
Jason Magruder said:
I'm enjoying it too

I am really curious though to try the various quenchants for myself to see how fast different ones are and what results they can give MY knives. I haven't seen many real speed numbers for canola, peanut, and even just plain old mineral oil.

I see a lot of arguing back and forth without any actual data from either side. Both groups appear to agree that parks 50 is fast enough for 1095 and that you need to use a quenchant that is fast enough to fully harden your blades.
As for the other "common alternatives" I see Tai saying that canola works fine and the other side saying that we need to use an oil specifically made for heat treating if we want the best results. The problem with that argument is that there aren't any oils made specifically for getting the best possible results on knives in a small shop. There are plenty of oils designed for getting optimal results on an assembly line but we aren't industrial users. We don't have the same requirements or the same concerns. I believe that our requirements and industrial requirements are close enough for industrial quenchants to likely work the best, but there are a lot of reasons industry would choose not to use a quenchant that wouldn't really apply to a knifemaker. Canola oil for instance would be a poor choice for industrial use even if it actually worked better than mineral oil or parafin based oils due to factors such as shelf life, limited number of heat cycles before the properties change, drag out, flash point, and cost. None of those factors really matter to a knifemaker buying a few gallons from WalMart.



If virgin blood was proven to be the absolute best quenchant for a given steel do you think industry would use it? Probably not, but I would sure as hell try to find a few virgins willing to sell a pint :D


So, the fact that industry doesn't use something really has no bearing on how well it will work for knives.
Click to expand...

There have been tests done comparing vegetable oils and mineral oils to Parks and Houghton, I don't have the links handy to refer to. Despite Tai's intentional championing of ignorance, I can tell you from my own experience that vegetable oil (which I thought was good enough for years because my knives hardened with a temperature controlled kiln and vegetable oil were consistently outcutting anything people tried to compete against them with) is not a great quench medium for knives. I was perfectly happy with the results I was getting with the vegetable oil, then I got a bucket of Parks 50 for a great price, the only thing I changed in the process was the oil, and my edge retention went up noticeably, and I was able to maintain a more aggressive edge bevel by about 4 degrees of included angle. Tai shattered a blade by edge quenching it in Parks and therefore Parks is bad in his mind, my guess is that the aggressive quench hardened the edge enough that the blade could not survive the stresses as the unquenched spine changed dimension as it cooled.

-Page
 
This reminds me of a story in the back page article in Knives or Blade magazine recently....as a recovering Baptist I tell it this way...

A man dies and goes to Heaven. We'll call him "Bob". Upon arrival St Peter meets Bob at the Pearly Gates. He welcomes Bob to Heaven and offers im a tour. St Peter says, " I know you've heard that your Father has come to prepare you a palace of many rooms. Let me give you a tour." They pass the first room and St Peter says, "in here are all the Budhists." The second room was where the Catholics were...they came past the Lutherans then approached another room....
St Peter put his fingers to his lips and said "shhhhhhhhhhh" as he tip toed past the room. Bob asked St Peter, "Why are we being quiet?" to which St Peter said "that's the room with the Baptists.....They think they're the only ones here....."

If I recall correctly, the original article was speaking of the miopia that exists within the knife community... Forgers are "real" knifemakers, no, "stock removal makes the most flawless knife" etc....

After twenty years in a Baptist church I am more than ready to say there's no "ONE" way to see or do things...

Hope this helps!
 
Page, No, I didn't shatter a blade,... it was a student of mine. Since then (during the course of this thread) he had the same thing happen with canola a couple times. So, it wasn't the Parks or canola or the quench speed alone. It's the temps., and timing, coupled with the geometry.

It's usually the temps., and timing, not the quenchung medium.
 
The student of mine (one of my best) started off using canola and was doing great work for several years. I have one of his kitchen knives and it cuts great! I use it all the time. Then he heard stuff about Parks #50, "proper" soak times, temps., etc., tried it and cracked the first blade. Then, he went back to canola and cracked a couple more.

The ironic part about it is that, his knives were "super" before the whole thing started.

Maybe there’s a lesson in this?
 
Last edited:
crex said:
Only takes a little reading on this other forums and attending a few shows to find "Knifemakers" (self-professed, of course) who have bought top of the line:

grinders
Click to expand...
Check
ovens
Click to expand...
Check
quenchants
Click to expand...
Check
and still cannot and probably will never make a respectable blade.
Click to expand...
This is uncanny Crex... have you been spying on me. :eek:

They bought the racecar but can't hang a left. ... Their shiney knives.......still sub standard crap!
Click to expand...
Seriously... now I have to go check my shop for cameras. :D

Tai Goo said:
The other side of the coin is, why do so many people waist so much time, energy, space and money on stuff they don't really need,... especially when they only make one knife a year,… if that?
Click to expand...

Hahaha... if I didn't have my fancy equipment, that same knife would probably take me two years. ;) I'm all about productivity. :p

Tai Goo said:
Maybe, or perhaps they are trying to make up for the fact that they don't have the skill, knowledge, intelligence, experience and intestinal fortitude etc., to get along without it.
Click to expand...

Well... now I have to get a restraining order for both you AND Crex.
... not within 50 yards of my place, I tell ya. :D
 
You people and your oil quench steels. ...meh... :grumpy:



:D
 
Page,

I have no doubt that "real" quench oils are better than plain old veggy oil or most likely anything else that hasn't been designed for quenching. My point was that just because it's the best for industrial uses does not mean it is the best for us because we have slightly differing requirements. It's PROBABLY the best we can get at the moment, but not necessarily.


It's kind of like how most industry is moving away from salt pots even though they are the best method of heat treating blade steels. The move to ovens has nothing to do with what makes the best blade or even what makes the best parts or whatever a given company produces. There are other factors involved. Quench oils are no different. Compromises are made to fit with other industry requirements that don't matter to bladesmiths. Maybe those compromises don't matter enough to keep them from being the best thing we can get, but it's still possible that they do.

I honestly don't know for sure what will work best for my knives but you can bet that I will be buying some Parks #50 and probably a few others to directly compare and discover what best gives me the results I am after with the steels I use. First I have to finish my oven and get a rockwell tester. I am also planning on building a crude impact tester to try some experiments with. I don't plan on going as nuts with metallurgy as Kevin but I do believe in testing as many factors as I reasonably can.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top