overheated blade during HT

M

Mac the knife-maker

Joined
Mar 9, 2012
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48
I overheated a blade during heat treating. What will that do to the hardness of the blade?

After quenching there was a texture left on the blade. Not really sure what caused that.

Any suggestions?

Thanks for your input.
Clay Mc
 
Clay,

How much did you over heat it? What was your quenchant? And What type of steel? You might be able to just do a couple of normalizing/thermalcycles to refine the grain structure.

But before we get too deep we need to know the answers to the above questions.
 
Overheating reduces strength and toughness . Some overheating can be corrected gross overheating makes scrap !
 
Right, the details......

It is 1095 steel. I think the temp got around 2200°f, I only have an analog thermometer on the old kiln I've been using. (I got distracted by supper and left the blade in probably 20 minutes too long)

Quenched in automatic transmission fluid.

Personally I think I made scrap, and the texture is from too much carbon coming out. But that's just a guess.

At first I intended to not finish it, but I kind of like the way it looks and want to save it if I can.
 
The texture is huge grain growth and serious decarb pitting. I would scrap the blade.
 
With 1095 you may have gotten lots of grainboundary carbides [ Brittle !] and perhaps oxidized grain boundaries . Scrap it.
 
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