O1 Sword - Heat Treating Questions

[duurza]

I like your Idea of quenching in steam.

Have you figured how to avoid getting in contact with the hot steam?

"Contact with the hot steam" <- Did you mean the steel getting into contact with steam or my arm as I attempt to lower this into the water?

1) Steel - No. The steam is what will provide a higher Heat Transfer coefficient than pure radiation but will not let liquid H2O touch it. To give you an idea, the steam jacket has a coefficient between 200 and 700 (from the wiki page). 450 is the minimum required value to avoid the nose at 600 °C. At the beginning of the quench, the value is around 700 which is more than enough to avoid the nose. When the temperature of the steel dips below 300 °C or so, the steam jacket would collapse. At this point, the value shoots up to 60000. I have been running all of these simulations to see whether or not this method is worth trying and to gauge approximately how long to quench before I interrupt.

2) Arm - no. I'm hoping the steam doesn't spray out and burn me.

 

[shoudan]

I meant the second. Otherwise it wouldn't be a steam quench.^^

I would think about it at least a few times instead of hoping for nothing to happen. Once caught in the steam, it's to late.
You have took so much time for simulating, it won't be much of an issue, thinking about how to not being burnt ;D.

 

[duurza]

I meant the second. Otherwise it wouldn't be a steam quench.^^

I would think about it at least a few times instead of hoping for nothing to happen. Once caught in the steam, it's to late.
You have took so much time for simulating, it won't be much of an issue, thinking about how to not being burnt ;D.

That's what I thought.

Right now, my biggest issue is getting 3.1 L of water to 100 °C. With a steel tube that is 4" x 2" x 36", it will absorb a lot of the energy that has gone into heating up the water and radiate it into the environment. Dunking hot steel into the water will also be problematic because even with 1 kg of steel at 820 C, I will still need to do this roughly 30 times before all of that water reaches that temperature.

My friend actually gave me this tube and he decided to paint the outside so that just means I can't put a torch to it without burning off paint.

I've quenched steel in water before to observe what happens and it is really only an issue if the water is cold since bubbles forming from the lower levels will cause the water near the surface to spray out. Hopefully for this, since the water has enough energy, it will vaporize quick and move upwards rather than all over the place.