- Joined
- Mar 14, 2000
- Messages
- 509
I know that I sold it to about 5 or 6 of you guys. The only one that I have heard any results from is "Mr. 52100", "Will" to most of us. His latest is a beauty too.
Please feel free to elaborate on the kinds of performance tests that you use and any improvements or otherwise.
As for me... I'm using type A, but I've only just finished my first forged knife. I'm using 5160 steel. I did a 3 X 4 heat treat with 24 hour freezer treatments between each normalizing, annealing, quench or tempering cycle. I also did a poor man's cryo with dry ice and kerosene (about 30?? hours). I did a total of 9 full normalizing cycles, 6 of which were during the forging process. I don't really have a decent belt grinder so I had to take the edge down really close to the finshed dimension prior to quenching. I think it had a detrimental effect on the cutting ability of the blade. Each time I sharpen it to cut some rope I get about 80% more cuts than the previous time. So far I'm up to 95 cuts before it quits shaving. I'm using some 1/2" manila rope that is pretty tightly wound. Who knows, maybe I'm just doing a better job of sharpening it. Let's see... I tempered it at 330 degrees the first cycle and dropped it 10 degrees each successive cycle. It passed the brass rod test beautifully (both sides of the blade, along the whole edge). Since this is the first forged blade for me I'm keeping it for my personal knife and it won't be tested to destruction. All future blades will be tested to destruction until I am confident in my processes. I recently aquired a liquide nitrogen dewar, so all future blades will be treated in LN also. LET THE TESTING BEGIN!!!
Rick
Please feel free to elaborate on the kinds of performance tests that you use and any improvements or otherwise.
As for me... I'm using type A, but I've only just finished my first forged knife. I'm using 5160 steel. I did a 3 X 4 heat treat with 24 hour freezer treatments between each normalizing, annealing, quench or tempering cycle. I also did a poor man's cryo with dry ice and kerosene (about 30?? hours). I did a total of 9 full normalizing cycles, 6 of which were during the forging process. I don't really have a decent belt grinder so I had to take the edge down really close to the finshed dimension prior to quenching. I think it had a detrimental effect on the cutting ability of the blade. Each time I sharpen it to cut some rope I get about 80% more cuts than the previous time. So far I'm up to 95 cuts before it quits shaving. I'm using some 1/2" manila rope that is pretty tightly wound. Who knows, maybe I'm just doing a better job of sharpening it. Let's see... I tempered it at 330 degrees the first cycle and dropped it 10 degrees each successive cycle. It passed the brass rod test beautifully (both sides of the blade, along the whole edge). Since this is the first forged blade for me I'm keeping it for my personal knife and it won't be tested to destruction. All future blades will be tested to destruction until I am confident in my processes. I recently aquired a liquide nitrogen dewar, so all future blades will be treated in LN also. LET THE TESTING BEGIN!!!
Rick