Normalizing Stock Removal 01, Necessary?

[LRB]

On an 01 blade made by stock removal, is normalizing necessary? Desirable? or a waste of time? Is any harm done if you do?

 

[J.D.]

I do stock removal on 0-1, I don't think it is necessary to normalize. I don't know if any harm would be done if you did, but I doubt there would be.

 

[mete]

No harm done. Assuming you bought properly annealed O-1 the only thing you could do to require normalizing is to put uneven stresses into it during grinding.Stress relief at 1200F would fix that.

 

[LRB]

But, would normalizing the stock removal blade, give me finer grain, or does the spheroidized anneal do all that can be done for fine grain? If I can get a better blade by normalizing, I want to do it. If it will not improve anything, I don't want to waste time and energy on the process.

 

[mete]

That gets into another whole discussion. As far a grain refinement most O-1 has some V for finer grain. You might improve carbide size .You don't know what you have but that would take a look through a microscope to find out .If you had large spheroidized carbides you could make them smaller .This could be done by normalizing or other means.

 

[Kevin R. Cashen]

LRB you are doing fine, as mete said a whole lot can be done to with just a good stress relieving operation. Think of that bar of steel as some collectible item that you just bought mint and in the box, any alteration you do from here on out has much thinner chance of improving the value than it does the inverse. 90% of all the added operations that bladesmiths do is because they went and beat the snot out of the steel and now need to correct a lot of issues that were not present before.

Are your blades working as they are to your satisfaction? Sometimes we need to ask if we are making the best knives we can make by our definition or by somebody else’s. If you control the soak temperatures well and can hold well enough to put the industrial annealing into solution, you will have a fine enough grain with a nice even microstructure. If extra heats were necessary for that much improvement we would have to admit that every stock remover today is making an inferior knife to the bladesmith, and I myself am certainly not ready to go there.

Most of us need to look at grain size as just one small part of an overall package, get it to a good size and be happy, single mindedly pursuing one attribute over all others invariably leads to greater compromises. Grain size is important, but so is carbon distribution, edge geometry, hardness etc… The pop culture marketing wants us to believe there are single silver bullets for a fine knife, but reality more often rests in the total package.

There are some makers that upon discovering their ability to control grain size they become like a 2 year old who has discovered his own body, so in awe of his new found joy that he endlessly diddles with it in public to no other purpose but to diddle, and get attention. While observers can’t tell him that it is bad, as there is nothing unhealthy about the object of his fascination and it can be useful one day, the best thing for those forced to witness this endless display is to let the enthusiastic explorer know that everybody has one but there is a time and a place for everything. In light of this he needs to play with some other toys and bring balance back to his life or he will eventually find that all the stares he gets with his adventures are not necessarily out of admiration.

 

[Nathan the Machinist]

There are some makers that upon discovering their ability to control grain size they become like a 2 year old who has discovered his own body, so in awe of his new found joy that he endlessly diddles with it in public to no other purpose but to diddle, and get attention. While observers can’t tell him that it is bad, as there is nothing unhealthy about the object of his fascination and it can be useful one day, the best thing for those forced to witness this endless display is to let the enthusiastic explorer know that everybody has one but there is a time and a place for everything. In light of this he needs to play with some other toys and bring balance back to his life or he will eventually find that all the stares he gets with his adventures are not necessarily out of admiration.

Kevin. I opened this thread because I saw you'd posted to it. But Jesus Christ man, what a weird allegory.

 

[Sam Salvati]

lol

 

[LRB]

Thanks for your input Kevin, and Mete'. I use an Evenheat oven, and by eliminating the normalizing, things will go a bit faster now. I use PBC powder and soak the 01 at 1475o for 20 minutes before quench, then temper at 475o with three, one hour heats. The last temper is done the next day due to time restraints. I am not looking for a super hard blade, as in the past, I have a few customers bitch about sharpening, although most often they are just not good at doing it, or use the wrong stones. Thanks again, the info you guys share is priceless.

 

[Kevin R. Cashen]

Kevin. I opened this thread because I saw you'd posted to it. But Jesus Christ man, what a weird allegory.

Well perhaps it may seem vulgar, but having raised three children through that obnoxious phase it came to mind. LRB seems to have things in order but the number of e-mails I get addressing concerns of grain size tells me that there is rather unhealthy fixation among many on grain size. I understand the problem, all you have to do is overheat the steel once when starting out and it will leave quite an impression, but then it gets reinforced too often by more experienced makers who really should have something as elementary as grain growth under control if they really are all that experienced.

Sometimes you gotta deviate from cold hard data and metallurgy into some opinionated observation in order to just let off some good old fashioned steam. And I have just seen a little too much public diddling (or “ego stroking”, if you prefer) on some topics.

 

[Kevin R. Cashen]

Thanks for your input Kevin, and Mete'. I use an Evenheat oven, and by eliminating the normalizing, things will go a bit faster now. I use PBC powder and soak the 01 at 1475o for 20 minutes before quench, then temper at 475o with three, one hour heats. The last temper is done the next day due to time restraints. I am not looking for a super hard blade, as in the past, I have a few customers bitch about sharpening, although most often they are just not good at doing it, or use the wrong stones. Thanks again, the info you guys share is priceless.

:thumbup:That sounds like a recipe for success to me. Once you get that deacarb handled soaking is great. I would like to see Rockwell readings from the as-quenched, and subsequent tempers, but that is only because that is one of my unhealthy fixations. It may border on obsessive-compulsive but I Rockwell anything I can and keep records. Every heat treatment I do is an opportunity to add more Rockwell numbers to my notebooks. I hope one day to be able to compile them all and perhaps see larger trends than I would see on an invidual test basis. It is habit that has made me a firm believer in more than one tempering cycle, a non wavering trend I have found is the homogenizing effect it has on penetrative hardness.

Your 20 minute soak jives well with your 475F temper, especaily if you have customers who are not insistant on a 62 HRC blade. Many makers would find 475F incredibly high for a temper but they may have never worked with soaks of that magnitude. I used to think along the common lines that those books and spec sheets are for industry, they don't apply to knives, so I can just make up my own numbers and ignore them, and that actaully did work as long as I didn't follow any of the other recommendations on those spec sheets, and suggested temperig temperatures were always too high. But as soon as I started using the recommended heats and times suddenly all the charts and numbers started to fall into line. Now I am surprised how consistent the process and results can be, and how well those guys who wrote the spec sheets had that steel figured out... imagine that!

 

[jdm61]

:thumbup:That sounds like a recipe for success to me. Once you get that deacarb handled soaking is great. I would like to see Rockwell readings from the as-quenched, and subsequent tempers, but that is only because that is one of my unhealthy fixations. It may border on obsessive-compulsive but I Rockwell anything I can and keep records. Every heat treatment I do is an opportunity to add more Rockwell numbers to my notebooks. I hope one day to be able to compile them all and perhaps see larger trends than I would see on an invidual test basis. It is habit that has made me a firm believer in more than one tempering cycle, a non wavering trend I have found is the homogenizing effect it has on penetrative hardness.

Your 20 minute soak jives well with your 475F temper, especaily if you have customers who are not insistant on a 62 HRC blade. Many makers would find 475F incredibly high for a temper but they may have never worked with soaks of that magnitude. I used to think along the common lines that those books and spec sheets are for industry, they don't apply to knives, so I can just make up my own numbers and ignore them, and that actaully did work as long as I didn't follow any of the other recommendations on those spec sheets, and suggested temperig temperatures were always too high. But as soon as I started using the recommended heats and times suddenly all the charts and numbers started to fall into line. Now I am surprised how consistent the process and results can be, and how well those guys who wrote the spec sheets had that steel figured out... imagine that!

475F is high? Seems to work perfectly on W2 that has been soaked Question for ya Kevin........what about this high carbon content 1084 that some of are using now. Would it be a good idea to temper it at a slightly higher temp than the standard 400F?

 

[Kevin R. Cashen]

475F is high? Seems to work perfectly on W2 that has been soaked Question for ya Kevin........what about this high carbon content 1084 that some of are using now. Would it be a good idea to temper it at a slightly higher temp than the standard 400F?

High carbon content? How high? If it is above the normal range of 1084, can we still call it 1084? But then if it has around .95%C but the same manganese as 1084 I guess we couldn't call it 1095 either, could we?

As for the temper it is hard to say for certain since it sounds like some new variables have been introduced. If it has a lot more carbon I would watch the soak temperature a little closer. For some reason I cannot bring myslef to just set a temperature on tempering and walk away yet, that is a good part of my nonstop hardness testing. There are overall trends that seem to work but there are still occasional variations that cause me to always want to walk my tempers in in increments so I know I nail it. In this case I would go with a set soak and quench routine and then start at 400F and walk it up, keeping good notes all the way.

 

[Sam Salvati]

Kevin when you say "walk it up" at what point do you stop? Do you check the RC after every temper cycle?

 

[Phillip Patton]

High carbon content? How high? If it is above the normal range of 1084, can we still call it 1084? But then if it has around .95%C but the same manganese as 1084 I guess we couldn't call it 1095 either, could we?

Call it 1084 Modified.

As for the temper it is hard to say for certain since it sounds like some new variables have been introduced. If it has a lot more carbon I would watch the soak temperature a little closer. For some reason I cannot bring myslef to just set a temperature on tempering and walk away yet, that is a good part of my nonstop hardness testing. There are overall trends that seem to work but there are still occasional variations that cause me to always want to walk my tempers in in increments so I know I nail it. In this case I would go with a set soak and quench routine and then start at 400F and walk it up, keeping good notes all the way.

I do the same thing, walking the tempering cycles up. I think that's because I'm afraid of over tempering. Since most of the W2 I'm using is from the same melt, I'd like to make myself a hardness testing block, so I'll know what tempering temps I need to use, and have something to compare the knives with, each time. I just need to do it.

About grain size. It does seem like there's way too much worrying about it. Speaking for myself, about the only time I've ever seen coarse grain size, is when I tried to make it coarse. Whenever I break steel, it's fine.
Even before thermal cycling.

 

[Kevin R. Cashen]

Kevin when you say "walk it up" at what point do you stop? Do you check the RC after every temper cycle?

Yep, until I get the exact reading I want. After all my note keeping over the years that almost always happens within three cycles. My first temper is never intended to be anything resembling a final temper. I always start out at 400F for a short time in order to stabilize things and take care of the stress of hardening, as well as transforming anything that may need in small percentages, just in case. I then test and temper again, normally at 420F for around an hour, and then test it again. At this point I want to see the normal and expected drop in Rc values to let me know things are going as predicted, and then I will zero in for the final temper. After that I check the hardness again just for my records and to be certain I don't have an anomaly that need some extra attention. Reflecting on all this I find it irritating when people insinuate that because you have the tools to read things precisely that you are at their mercy and are helpless to stop disaster should they read wrong. I believe I keep a closer eye on things than the guys who spurn the fancy gadgets. The reason a lot of us mad scientist types have all those fancy gizmos is not because we pay less attention to the process, it is because we are obsessed with watching it even closer!

 

[Kevin R. Cashen]

About grain size. It does seem like there's way too much worrying about it. Speaking for myself, about the only time I've ever seen coarse grain size, is when I tried to make it coarse. Whenever I break steel, it's fine.
Even before thermal cycling.

Some steel will oblige you much more than others. One can get away with whole lot with 5160 or even W2, but overheat 1095 and you can make really pretty sugar crystals pretty quick

But as you said, overheating is the problem. Watch the heat and you have nothing to worry about.

 

[Phillip Patton]

Some steel will oblige you much more than others. One can get away with whole lot with 5160 or even W2, but overheat 1095 and you can make really pretty sugar crystals pretty quick

But as you said, overheating is the problem. Watch the heat and you have nothing to worry about.

Yup. Whenever I forge something, I make sure I end up "edge packing". LOL Just kidding! What I mean is, forge it at a low enough heat that it's thermal cycling while I'm finish forging. That works for simple steels like 1095. For most of the other steels I use, like you said, just the alloying elements are enough to keep grain size small.
Of course, I do normalize my blades, just so I can be in control. :thumbup: And so that it's more homogenous. I would never leave a blade in it's as-forged condition.

 

[Kevin R. Cashen]

Yup. Whenever I forge something, I make sure I end up "edge packing". LOL Just kidding! ...

Hey if you put it that way I edge pack as well Heck, if you put it that way edge packing actually works. But then I have always said it does, as long as you lose the hammer and call it something else

 

[Sam Salvati]

Yep, until I get the exact reading I want. After all my note keeping over the years that almost always happens within three cycles. My first temper is never intended to be anything resembling a final temper. I always start out at 400F for a short time in order to stabilize things and take care of the stress of hardening, as well as transforming anything that may need in small percentages, just in case. I then test and temper again, normally at 420F for around an hour, and then test it again. At this point I want to see the normal and expected drop in Rc values to let me know things are going as predicted, and then I will zero in for the final temper. After that I check the hardness again just for my records and to be certain I don't have an anomaly that need some extra attention. Reflecting on all this I find it irritating when people insinuate that because you have the tools to read things precisely that you are at their mercy and are helpless to stop disaster should they read wrong. I believe I keep a closer eye on things than the guys who spurn the fancy gadgets. The reason a lot of us mad scientist types have all those fancy gizmos is not because we pay less attention to the process, it is because we are obsessed with watching it even closer!

Excellent! I never do understand when people shun the things that will help them to understand something more. It's amazing that most of the time tempering temperature and RC go so closely and predictably hand in hand, screw quenching in blood under an eclipse with a holy man chanting with a necklace of chicken legs around your neck, THAT'S real magic.