Jim March
Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
- Joined
- Oct 7, 1998
- Messages
- 3,022
It was a long strange trip, but The Outsider is done. For those of you joining
in late, it's a custom knife of my own semi-radical design. It's in flight to
North Carolina now where it'll be sheathed by Scott Evans of Edgeworks
Manufacturing; Scott has a great reputation and was easy to work with during
the process of designing the sheath and being willing to do something based on
my ideas; that's also true in spades of Harald Moeller of Canada, the maker.
At one point, Paul Bos was going to be involved in the heat-treat.
Note the past tense.
There were several reasons I picked Paul for the heat-treat. In a phone
conversation, he talked about the numerous makers who'd continued to use him
over the years, and all sources said his heat control abilities were very
precise, very repeatable. The biggest negative voice was Ernest Mayer, who'd
come up with a lower-temp tempering cycle that per some sources increased the
toughness but reduced ultra-high-temp operating ability - as in, jet engine
temps such as the turbine blades ATS34 was originally designed for. Paul spoke
with pride on never changing his "recipe" since his jet engine days, which
bothered me a bit but...lots of people have used him.
The first problem was that Harald's steel supplier gave him 440C billed as
ATS34. It's a fairly common point of confusion in the industry; even during
grinding it's apparantly *really* hard to tell them apart. Paul heat-treated
it at his usual (degrees F) 1950/cool/950/cool/950/cool recipe and it came out
Rockwell 55. Ooops...too low, he checked, sure enough it's 440C.
Damn. Harald EMailed me, asked me to call him collect and broke the bad news.
He explained that we could start over in real ATS34, we could go with the
slightly-lower-hardness 440C which would still be a decent blade, edgeholding
would be a bit low but then again it ain't a utility piece...or Paul could
re-anneal and do it up in a 440C recipe. I EMailed a small group of people
with more metallurgical skills asking for advice and Alan Folts got back to me
saying that #1, this is kinda common and #2, re-annealing wouldn't work. The
440C would come out like crap, basically.
That's when I phoned Paul up the next morning; Paul had already decided on the
re-anneal, he explained that this happens all the time, he'd had batches of up
to 100 custom knives at a time turn out to be 440C versus ATS34 and that he
could re-anneal, do it up 440C style and it'd be good 440C. I was disappointed
he hadn't left Harald and I with the option of lower-Rockwell higher toughness
because after Alan's EMail, I was ready to go that route. This was all 1 month
or so before Knifignugen and I *really* wanted it for Arizona.
Harald then said that when the re-annealed and treated 440C came back, he'd
examine it and if it was OK, we'd complete it.
It wasn't. Harald noted a "mottled, bubbly" finish indicative of trouble, a
bit of whacking and the tip popped off. He then broke it in half to examine
the grain structure and send the scrap back to Paul.
I then told Harald not to rush, to do up the ATS34 right and forget K'Nugen
timetables. Harald did additional research followed by his own heat-treat
using the Ernie Mayeroid recipe of 1925/375/375 preceded by a home-brew
cryo-treat of burying it in dry ice for 16 hours in an old freezer. His newest
tests show this is a *great* recipe just like Ernie says it is, and it's now
unlikely that Paul Bos will ever touch another Moeller ATS34 blade again.
KUDOS TO HARALD MOELLER for the honesty to admit what happened and be willing
to eat the labor of the first now-broken blade because it didn't meet his
quality standards. $hit happens, but integrity needs to be a constant.
At K'Nugen, I related this tale to Kevin the Mad Dog, who explained that
re-annealing was the mistake. Per him, to just do the heat cycles over again
in 440C fashion would have been better. Alan Folts had predicted the problem
beforehand, although his attitude in such cases is to just scrap the 440C part
entirely for top performance. Which of these gents is correct is beyond my
ability to say, but I'd trust either before Paul.
Paul is not an innovator. His line of "I've been doing it this way for 20+
years" falls flat in my ears; it's obvious to me that a knife or sword doesn't
have to operate at temps that would kill a human. Metallurgy is tradeoffs, and
if I can trade high operating temps for better human-range temp functionality,
hell yes Ernie, that's a great idea. He's also not a troubleshooter, and he
was arrogant in denying me the option of "softer tougher 440C".
All that said, so long as no special problem arises his temp controls *are*
consistent, he practically never does a genuine bad heat-treat due purely to
his own screwups. If you're trying to do a solid basic knife without pushing
the performance envelope to the max, he's good, fast and fair and has without
question helped a lot of smaller knifemakers over the years either directly or
via the heat-treats he did for the late Bob Engnath.
I respect Paul, but I wish he'd test, experiment and innovate more. He's had
no competition for a LONG time, and that's part of the problem. The sooner
Ernest Mayer of Black Cloud knives has his heat-treat sideline up, the better
so far as I'm concerned. The custom knife biz is booming, it can support two
major specialty heat-treaters with ease.
Jim March
in late, it's a custom knife of my own semi-radical design. It's in flight to
North Carolina now where it'll be sheathed by Scott Evans of Edgeworks
Manufacturing; Scott has a great reputation and was easy to work with during
the process of designing the sheath and being willing to do something based on
my ideas; that's also true in spades of Harald Moeller of Canada, the maker.
At one point, Paul Bos was going to be involved in the heat-treat.
Note the past tense.
There were several reasons I picked Paul for the heat-treat. In a phone
conversation, he talked about the numerous makers who'd continued to use him
over the years, and all sources said his heat control abilities were very
precise, very repeatable. The biggest negative voice was Ernest Mayer, who'd
come up with a lower-temp tempering cycle that per some sources increased the
toughness but reduced ultra-high-temp operating ability - as in, jet engine
temps such as the turbine blades ATS34 was originally designed for. Paul spoke
with pride on never changing his "recipe" since his jet engine days, which
bothered me a bit but...lots of people have used him.
The first problem was that Harald's steel supplier gave him 440C billed as
ATS34. It's a fairly common point of confusion in the industry; even during
grinding it's apparantly *really* hard to tell them apart. Paul heat-treated
it at his usual (degrees F) 1950/cool/950/cool/950/cool recipe and it came out
Rockwell 55. Ooops...too low, he checked, sure enough it's 440C.
Damn. Harald EMailed me, asked me to call him collect and broke the bad news.
He explained that we could start over in real ATS34, we could go with the
slightly-lower-hardness 440C which would still be a decent blade, edgeholding
would be a bit low but then again it ain't a utility piece...or Paul could
re-anneal and do it up in a 440C recipe. I EMailed a small group of people
with more metallurgical skills asking for advice and Alan Folts got back to me
saying that #1, this is kinda common and #2, re-annealing wouldn't work. The
440C would come out like crap, basically.
That's when I phoned Paul up the next morning; Paul had already decided on the
re-anneal, he explained that this happens all the time, he'd had batches of up
to 100 custom knives at a time turn out to be 440C versus ATS34 and that he
could re-anneal, do it up 440C style and it'd be good 440C. I was disappointed
he hadn't left Harald and I with the option of lower-Rockwell higher toughness
because after Alan's EMail, I was ready to go that route. This was all 1 month
or so before Knifignugen and I *really* wanted it for Arizona.
Harald then said that when the re-annealed and treated 440C came back, he'd
examine it and if it was OK, we'd complete it.
It wasn't. Harald noted a "mottled, bubbly" finish indicative of trouble, a
bit of whacking and the tip popped off. He then broke it in half to examine
the grain structure and send the scrap back to Paul.
I then told Harald not to rush, to do up the ATS34 right and forget K'Nugen
timetables. Harald did additional research followed by his own heat-treat
using the Ernie Mayeroid recipe of 1925/375/375 preceded by a home-brew
cryo-treat of burying it in dry ice for 16 hours in an old freezer. His newest
tests show this is a *great* recipe just like Ernie says it is, and it's now
unlikely that Paul Bos will ever touch another Moeller ATS34 blade again.
KUDOS TO HARALD MOELLER for the honesty to admit what happened and be willing
to eat the labor of the first now-broken blade because it didn't meet his
quality standards. $hit happens, but integrity needs to be a constant.
At K'Nugen, I related this tale to Kevin the Mad Dog, who explained that
re-annealing was the mistake. Per him, to just do the heat cycles over again
in 440C fashion would have been better. Alan Folts had predicted the problem
beforehand, although his attitude in such cases is to just scrap the 440C part
entirely for top performance. Which of these gents is correct is beyond my
ability to say, but I'd trust either before Paul.
Paul is not an innovator. His line of "I've been doing it this way for 20+
years" falls flat in my ears; it's obvious to me that a knife or sword doesn't
have to operate at temps that would kill a human. Metallurgy is tradeoffs, and
if I can trade high operating temps for better human-range temp functionality,
hell yes Ernie, that's a great idea. He's also not a troubleshooter, and he
was arrogant in denying me the option of "softer tougher 440C".
All that said, so long as no special problem arises his temp controls *are*
consistent, he practically never does a genuine bad heat-treat due purely to
his own screwups. If you're trying to do a solid basic knife without pushing
the performance envelope to the max, he's good, fast and fair and has without
question helped a lot of smaller knifemakers over the years either directly or
via the heat-treats he did for the late Bob Engnath.
I respect Paul, but I wish he'd test, experiment and innovate more. He's had
no competition for a LONG time, and that's part of the problem. The sooner
Ernest Mayer of Black Cloud knives has his heat-treat sideline up, the better
so far as I'm concerned. The custom knife biz is booming, it can support two
major specialty heat-treaters with ease.
Jim March
